e
paddock doesn't seem more than enough for me, so far. We wobble
magnificently, the team and I! However, I keep hoping! I'd better be
going. Sure you don't want me, Dad?"

"Not just now, old chap."

"Well, I'll be back before long." He smiled at his father and Norah,
swinging out over the window ledge, and whistling cheerily until his
long legs had carried him out of sight.

"He'll be a good man on the place, Norah."

"Why, of course," said Norah, a little surprised that statement should
be made of so evident a fact. "Murty says he's 'takin' howld wid' both
hands, an' 'tis the ould man over agin,' though it's like Murty's cheek
to call you that. You won't be able to let him go away, I believe,
Dad."

"I don't see myself sparing him to any other place now," said Mr.
Linton. "Nor the head nurse either!"

Norah slipped down beside him.

"I've been thinking," she said, a little anxiously. "It's been so
lovely to think of no old school until midwinter--but I'd go sooner--when
you're quite well--if you're worried really, Dad. I don't want to be a
duffer--and of course I don't know half that other girls know."

"Jim will be able to keep you from going back, I expect," her father
said, watching the troubled face. "He won't be exactly a stern tutor,
and possibly lessons may be free and easy; still, after all, Jim was a
prefect, and the handling of unruly subjects is probably not unknown to
him."

"If Jim attempts to be a prefect with me," said Norah, "things will be
mixed!" She laughed, but the line came back into her forehead. "It's
not the lessons I was thinking of, Dad."

"Then what is it?"

"Oh, all the other things I don't know that other girls do. Do you
think it really matters, Dad? I know perfectly well I don't do my hair
properly--"

"I seem to like it."

"And I can't talk prettily--you know, like Cecil did; and I don't know a
single blessed thing about fancywork! I'd--I'd hate you to be ashamed of
me, Dad, dear!"

"Ashamed?" He held her close; and when he spoke again there was
something in his voice that made Norah suddenly content.

"Little mate!" was all he said.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mates at Billabong, by Mary Grant Bruce

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