She was
everybody's pet and plaything; the only being who had power to make her
stern, silent father smile--almost the only one who ever saw the softer
side of his character. He was fond and proud of Jim--glad that the boy
was growing up straight and strong and manly, able to make his way in
the world. But Norah was his heart's desire.

Of course she was spoilt--if spoiling consists in rarely checking an
impulse. All her life Norah had done pretty well whatever she
wanted--which meant that she had lived out of doors, followed in Jim's
footsteps wherever practicable (and in a good many ways most people
would have thought distinctly impracticable), and spent about two-thirds
of her waking time on horseback. But the spoiling was not of a very
harmful kind. Her chosen pursuits brought her under the unspoken
discipline of the work of the station, wherein ordinary instinct taught
her to do as others did, and conform to their ways. She had all the
dread of being thought "silly" that marks the girl who imitates boyish
ways. Jim's rare growl, "Have a little sense!" went farther home than a
whole volume of admonitions of a more ordinarily genuine feminine type.

She had no little girl friends, for none was nearer than the nearest
township--Cunjee, seventeen miles away. Moreover, little girls bored
Norah frightfully. They seemed a species quite distinct from herself.
They prattled of dolls; they loved to skip, to dress up and "play
ladies"; and when Norah spoke of the superior joys of cutting out cattle
or coursing hares over the Long Plain, they stared at her with blank
lack of understanding. With boys she got on much better. Jim and she
were tremendous chums, and she had moped sadly when he went to Melbourne
to school. Holidays then became the shining events of the year, and the
boys whom Jim brought home with him, at first prone to look down on the
small girl with lofty condescension, generally ended by voting her "no
end of a jolly kid," and according her the respect due to a person who
could teach them more of bush life than they had dreamed of.

But Norah's principal mate was her father. Day after day they were
together, riding over the run, working the cattle, walking through the
thick scrub of the backwater, driving young, half-broken horses in the
high dog-cart to Cunjee--they were rarely apart. David Linton seldom
made a plan that did not naturally include Norah. She was a wise little
companion, too; ready enough to ch