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Chapter II
Nan from Little Ararat

Have you ever thought what a tricky thing Adventure is? You look for it, and it is never there, and then, when you are least expecting it, out it pops from behind the corner. Jan, Jock, Pipi, and I never expected anything more than the usual picnicky, sunshiny kind of holidays—you know what I mean—and before we realized what had happened we were in the midst of thrills.

Things were exciting from the very first when Rob tried to drive Sober Toby and Skittish Simon. One of the shepherds at Kamahi, riding toward the homestead, met the horses dashing wildly down the road, miles past the house. Of course he rode home as quickly as he could after that, and Uncle John left his nice warm bed, and hastily organized a search-party to bring in the injured. Then, as I told you, he found us.

Uncle John picked up poor tired Pipi, and carried her like a baby; Mr McPherson, a grumpy old shepherd, said "Puir lassie" in the kindest way, and helped me along; but Uncle Dan was so taken up with looking after Kathie that he page 21had no time to spare for the rest of us. We went along the road, then down a hill—we were not far from Kamahi after all—till we saw the lights of the homestead glowing like little friendly stars among the trees on the river-bed.

No fire ever sparkled more cheeringly than the fire in the big open fireplace in the dining-room before which we thawed; no tea was ever hotter than the great reviving cupfuls Uncle Dan poured out for us, and which we drank straight away so that we might be as warm inside as we were on top; no meal ever tasted half so good as the ham and eggs and hot buttered toast Mrs McPherson, the uncles' housekeeper, brought in to us, as we sat round the table, our mouths open, ready to begin the moment supper appeared.

"Trust those children to get into trouble of some kind," she said, grimly. I'm afraid Mrs McPherson didn't really approve of any of us, and least of all she approved of Jan, Pipi, and me.

At last there was bed, my own little white stretcher, and no bed was ever quite so soft and warm and comfortable before. I felt myself slipping away into a delicious dreamland, and quite forgot my bruises, even the one on my knee, which was turning the daintiest shade of mauve and pink.

Then I dreamt. I dreamt that Pipi had swallowed a lion, and I was trying to shoot it without page 22injuring her. Next I thought I was a slice of bread, and Kathie was toasting me in front of the fire. I was just beginning to brown nicely when the clang of the shearers' bell cut across my dreams, and I wakened to find myself in my own little bed at Kamahi.

In the two white stretchers at the other side of the room Jan and Pipi still slept peacefully— Jan sprawling all over the bed, and Pipi tucked into a tight little round ball. I lay watching them, listening to the singing of the birds outside, but the sunshine was flooding the room, and the scents of the country came stealing through the window. I simply could not stay in bed. Jan opened one eye, and shut it again, as I slipped out on to the veranda, but Pipi never stirred. It was such a glad, glorious morning, fresh and sweet, and straight from God. A shower had fallen during the night, and the world was all smiling and wonderful. Every flower in the garden was shining to welcome me. Roses nodded their heads round the veranda posts; slender white lilies bowed gracefully in the breeze; and delicate, trailing sweet-peas peeped over the fence.

"Holidays begun! Holidays begun!" they said.

Over by the plantation a mist of blue-grey gossamer lay against the pine-trees; a column of smoke rose lazily from the cook-house in the men's quarters; and all around was the won-page 23derful stillness of the country. I love the stillness of the country, don't you? Kathie says, sometimes, at Kamahi, she can almost hear herself think.

I couldn't exactly hear myself think, but my thoughts were very pleasant ones, real holiday thoughts. Of course Father and Mother were far away, but they would be enjoying themselves too—that was, of course, if Mother wasn't sea-sick on the voyage over to Sydney—and they would be gone only six weeks. Then there was the party Uncle Stephen had promised us, the trips down the river-bed, the excursions into the bush on the mountains on the other side of the river.

"You'd better hurry!" Jan cried.

In the bedroom Jan and Pipi were dressing —Pipi hurriedly, Jan with care. Jan was very anxious to impress Uncle Stephen this first morning. Jan isn't very tidy, and Uncle's eyes are sharp. Jan once declared that if she had a hole in her stocking under her foot, and her shoe over that, and her legs under the table, Uncle Stephen would detect it directly she sat down to dinner.

Pipi gave her head one last smack with the brush.

"I shan't bother any more," she declared. "It's all right, Skinny. It doesn't want any more combin'. It's holidays."

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In the dining-room we found the uncles and Rob and Jock waiting for us, Rob leaning against the mantel, trying to look like Uncle Dan, and Jock, who was also trying to make a good impression, with his hair sleek and his knees scrubbed. When Jock wants to make an impression he begins on his knees and works up. The uncles smiled at us.

"Sit down, all of you," beamed Uncle John.

"Breakfast is getting cold, little people," added Uncle Stephen.

"Don't take all the cream, "begged Uncle Dan.

There are three uncles, you see—Uncle John, Uncle Stephen, and Uncle Dan. They live at Kamahi, with only a stiff and starchy old housekeeper, Mrs McPherson, to look after them. Uncle John is the most important; perhaps because he is the eldest. He is big and burly, with a gruff voice, and a moustache which perks up at the corners, like a danger signal, when he is cross. Uncle Stephen is tall and thin and grey, with a stoop, and eyes that go through you, and out the other side. Uncle Stephen can tell what you are going to think before you think it.

Uncle Dan? Well, Uncle Dan is not really an uncle, or any relation at all. Uncle Stephen and Uncle John adopted him when he was a little boy, and he has always lived with them. Uncle Dan has merry blue eyes with a twinkle in them, and page 25a habit of making bad jokes which we don't encourage. Of course he is only twenty-six, which is years and years and years younger than Uncle John and Uncle Stephen, but he likes to think he is important too. Just to keep him in his place Pipi said she was going to call him Hezekiah. She said Hezekiah was a prophet too, like Daniel, though I think he was one of the Kings of the House of Judah.

"And what are you young folks going to do to-day?" asked Uncle John, smiling around, and passing Pipi the toast. "Marmalade, Pipi?"

"And cream on top of it. I like cream on top of marmalade, and marmalade on top of butter, and butter on top of toast," Pipi answered pensively. "Ngaire and I are going down to the river."

"Any plans, Jan?" asked Uncle John.

"There's millions of things I want to do," Jan answered, sitting back, with shining eyes. "To go down to the river, and up the hill, and read in the library, and ride Paweka, and—"

"I'm going to cook," Kathie announced, importantly. Uncle John and Uncle Stephen smiled at each other over her head, but Kathie turned to Uncle Dan.

"I shall begin on scones," she said.

Perhaps you are wondering why Kathie should choose to spend her holidays cooking in a stuffy page 26kitchen. You see, Kathie was engaged. This sounds romantic and interesting, but it really wasn't, as she was only engaged to Uncle Dan.

Seven months ago Uncle had placed a shining diamond ring on the third finger of Kathie's left hand, and except when she mislaid it, and once when she quarrelled with him, Kathie always wore that ring. Uncle Dan thought Easter—the coming Easter—the very best time to be married, and Kathie agreed with him. Father, however, wouldn't hear of it.

"She's only just twenty," he told Uncle Dan. "It's ridiculous. She's nothing but a child. Have you," asked Father, suddenly, "ever eaten one of her scones?"

That is how it began. Kathie wheedled, and Uncle Dan persisted, and at last Father gave way, and declared that if Kathie could bake a cake, make bread, and mix puddings before the holidays were over he would give his consent, and she could be married at Easter. But Father smiled. You see he knew what Kathie's cooking was like. He had tasted it, and once, after crumbed cutlets, had been quite ill. Kathie's cakes are soggy; her bread never rises; she forgets the rice in the rice puddings; and her scones—well, her scones look as if an elephant had danced a haka on top of them. Mrs McPherson, at Uncle John's, request, undertook to coach her page 27in what Uncle called the "culinary arts," and Kathie meant to cook if she killed herself and every one else in the attempt.

"I shall start with bread," she said, smiling at Uncle John, and looking very pink and pretty, "and then I shall work on to cakes, and after that—ugh! poultry."

"Mrs McPherson put me into puddings the first week when she gave us lessons last time we were here," Jan remarked, with superiority.

"I shall be at ducks soon," Kathie said. She wasn't going to be patronized by Jan, even if Jan's scones did rise till they lifted the top off the oven. Jan's sponge-cakes, too, were really spongy, and the fruit never sank to the bottom of her plum-cakes. Kathie's sponges—well, they are better left where they usually landed, at the bottom of the pig bucket; and her fruit-cakes— once, really, she forgot the fruit.

Uncle Stephen looked at Jan.

"If you have nothing better to do, I am riding over the river this morning, and Paweka needs exercise."

"I'd love to come," Jan cried, eagerly.

She went off to get her hat, and, as it had not been unpacked, borrowed mine instead. Rob rode off with Uncle Dan, in pursuit of some cattle that had strayed, and Kathie, trembling a little, departed to the kitchen to take her first lessons in page 28the 'culinary arts.' Jock, Pipi, and I went with her, to eat up her failures and lick the bowls, but Mrs McPherson hardly welcomed us, and as it was such a beautiful day we decided to play outside instead.

"We don't like a stuffy kitchen," Pipi said, her nose in the air. "We only wanted to help. We'd much sooner be outside in the nice, warm sunshine."

We slipped out of the house, over the soft green of the lawn, through the coolness and the shadows of the pine plantation, where the needles lay like a thick carpet under our feet, out into the open again, over the sweep of golden-brown tussocks to where the river sparkled and gleamed in the distance.

And it was here we first met Nan.

She came riding down the river-bed on a high black horse toward us. At first she seemed a little speck on the greyness of the river-bed, but as she came nearer we could see her curly hair blowing in the breeze, and her bare brown knees gripping the horse's sides. When she saw us she drew up, and smiled down at us in a half-shy, half-friendly way. Then we said "Hullo!" and she said "Hullo!"

It was here, really and truly, that our Adventures began. Of course we did not know that Nan was Adventure. We thought she was just page 29an ordinary, everyday little girl, like Pipi or me, but with a wilder, shyer look. Perhaps I had better let you see her for yourselves, and then you will feel that you know her better. She was a wisp of a thing about Jock's age, with a mop of brown hair framing a small, sunburnt face, and brown eyes like the still pools you sometimes find on the mountain heights. She wore no hat, her legs were bare, and her jumper was faded to the colour of the yellow-brown landscape. There, I can't describe her any better than that.

She told us her name was Nan—Nan Somerset. She lived at Kinloch, higher up the river, and had ridden down that morning with Bridget and Mr Campbell, who had stopped at "The Point" to see about some sheep. She was going to meet them later on the way back.

"Who's Bridget—and Mr Campbell?" asked Pipi, with interest. Pipi is a human interrogation mark. Uncle Dan says that if you locked her in a box questions would leak through.

Nan looked at her.

"I live with Bridget and Mr Campbell," she said, slowly.

"Have you been long at Kinloch?" I asked.

Nan shook her head.

"We only came down from the mountains three months ago," she answered. "Bridget and Mr Campbell and me. We used to live over there."

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She pointed to a peak which rose, white and dazzling, in the distance.

"That's Little Ararat. Jordan is near there. That's where we lived—at Jordan."

She was shy. We soon discovered that, but Pipi laughed and talked in her friendly way, and Nan soon forgot that we were strangers and laughed and talked with us. She told us about her old home, away back in the mountains. It. lay somewhere over the river, across the Little Ararat Pass, and behind the valley of Sharon— wild, rugged country, with hidden valleys and rough gullies, with rushing rivers, and with three great glaciers guarding the mountain heights.

"Would you like to go back?" I asked. "Do you like living at Kinloch? Kinloch is plain country, like Kamahi, isn't it?"

Nan looked at us, and for a while she was silent. That was one thing we were to learn about Nan. At home we all talk at once, and though Mother sometimes says, "Less noise, children. One at a time, please," we never take any notice. Why, if you waited for every one else to be quiet you would never speak at all. But Nan did not chatter as we did. She was given to long silences, which surprised us, and silenced us too. I think, perhaps, it was the lonely life she had led.

At last she spoke.

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"The mountains can be very cruel sometimes," she said. "Once they get you they never let you go. There was once a little boy, no bigger than you." She turned to Pipi, who stared back at her with widening eyes. "He lived in the mountains, away up at Seven Hills, and one day he wandered away, all by himself. He went right up the hill at the back of the house, and the mist came down, and they didn't find him, not till a week later. He was lying under a cabbage-tree, with his head resting on his hands, and at first they thought he was asleep. He looked very happy, Bridget says. She knew him quite well. She lived at Seven Hills once."

"Oh!" I breathed.

"Oh!" gasped Jock.

Pipi said nothing, but rubbed her eyes and glared fiercely at us.

"Couldn't he have shouted? Couldn't he have made anyone hear? I'd have shouted and shouted. I'd have hollered at the top of my voice."

"It wasn't any good shouting," Nan said.

We drifted into silence again. The sun was high in the heavens now, and shone warmly on us. Somewhere in the sky a lark sang joyously, as perhaps he sang when the little boy died all alone on the misty mountain-side. I think I shall always remember Nan as I saw her that day. She had seated herself on the ground beside page 32Pipi, her chin resting in her small brown hands. Pipi squatted beside her, and against Nan's brownness she seemed a vision of pink and gold, one of those angel children you see in Christmas booklets or at the end of American magazines advertising somebody's sandals or tooth-paste, or hats for little girls. But I liked to look at Nan. I liked her small brown face, her brown hair. I liked—

"There's the cook-house bell," Pipi cried.

As if in answer to her words, Kathie appeared, waving to us at the edge of the pine plantation. Our luncheon was at twelve o'clock too. We rose, and Nan rose with us. All at once she seemed frightened and unhappy.

"I must go. I must go to Bridget and Mr Campbell," she said.

"It's only Kathie. Kathie wouldn't hurt anyone, not even a fly," Pipi explained kindly, but Nan only looked at us pitifully.

"I must go," she repeated.

Without another word she mounted the high black horse, and rode away down the river-bed. We stood watching her, disregarding Kathie's appeals, till she disappeared, a black speck in the distance.

Then, with a sigh, we turned our faces toward the uncles and roast chicken.