Stella came home, and quite naturally managed the staff of domestics and efficiently ran the homestead. The world beyond far-away Broken Hill continued on its exciting social and political orbit, but at Wirragatta, as at Carie, it rolled placidly onward from year to year and left no regrets.

Neither of them vegetated, notwithstanding. Wirragatta was not a farm but a principality; the men were not yokels but clever sheepmen and fine horsemen. Many of them were well-read and well-informed. The neighbouring squatters were not country men but people modern in ideas, in dress, in manners. The internal combustion engine had wiped Cobb and Co.’s horse-drawn coaches off the tracks, and now was beginning to span andrespan the skies. The great depression was passing and hope burned in the hearts of men.

As theseBorradales had agreed, human activities outside the house were stopped by this second day of wind and blinding sand. The stockmen in their huts were unable even to read. The cooks swore and gave up their efforts to protect food. Even within the well-built homestead, even within Stella’s bedroom, where she sat reading a novel, the air was tinged with red dust. It was necessary, in order to read, to have the standard oil-lamp burning, there being no electric light at Wirragatta.

The wind boomed and whined about the house, and the colour of the oblong presented by the windows deepened to a sinister dark red as the day aged. Stella’s chair vibrated like a harp-string. The lamp smoked if the wick was turned to its normal height. Already her eyelids and the corners of her mouth were sticky with dust. And so, first reading and then dozing, Stella got through the morning.

At noon the maid appeared to ascertain her wishes about lunch. The girl’s hair was damp and wispy, and her face was stained by dust and coloured by heat. Knowing full well the terrible conditions faced by the cook, Stella suggested tea and toast. She invariably suggested; never ordered.