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Actually she had been about to say, ‘I now intend to tell you the truth,’ even at the risk of his wrath, for she knew he would be very angry.

But she never got that far. He looked at her in surprise, then said: ‘You
are
obsessed, aren’t you? Do you always take a reprimand to heart like that? Good heavens, weren’t you ever spanked?’

‘Yes—by you. Over that watch.’

‘My dear child,
that
was only a tap. When I do find cause to punish you ...’ he laughed.

Except that she was so relieved that she was on the wrong course, Paddy would have picked him up over that ‘... when I do find cause to punish you.’

‘Then—then what are you going for?’ she asked thankfully.

‘It’s none of your business, but I’ll still tell you. This house ... castle, you call it ... is extremely old. No doubt you’ve noticed that.’

‘Old and beautiful.’

‘I agree, and evidently others agree as well. I think I told you once the National Trust was interested.’

‘Yes, when I first came here.’

They’ve been in touch again, and they want to take it over.’

‘Would you like that?’ she asked.

‘I would be proud of that. As it is now, with three distinct units, it’s not its gracious self.’

Paddy asked, ‘Where would you live?’

‘In the plantation house, of course—much more to my liking for a family home.’

‘But you’re not a family, are you?’

‘I will be when I legally adopt the boys.’

‘Or when you marry and have more boys.’

‘A girl or two would be allowed,’ he drawled. ‘Regarding the wards,’ he went on, ‘the slow and deliberate way adoption moves, they’ll probably be living in their own quarters before it’s through.’ He jerked his head towards the window and beyond the window to the cluster of buildings. They’re all still keen on bloodstock, and that includes Richard, Little Lulu’s confinement and all.’

‘You would live at your work, too?’

‘I told you, I would live with my family in the banana house. It’s not far to travel each day. Now don’t say there’s no family, because there will be.’ He caught and held her eyes. He held them for so long that she had to turn away.

‘I’ll be gone a week,' he said.

There was no reason now for Paddy to sneak out, and on the first morning she walked quite openly to Standen, and even, when Kip came out, accepted his invitation to look the place over.

It was as big and as well equipped as Yoothamurra;

Magnus had told her that there were only the two big studs, that the rest only dabbled.

Kip took her everywhere, even places where Paddy might have stood back, fearing she could be intruding.

‘Don’t worry,’ Kip assured her, ‘old Standen’s in England. I’m in complete control. My God, if I only were
always!
That’s what I want, Padua, that’s what I must have. I have the ability, in fact I have exceptional ability.’

‘Yes, Mr David said that,’ she agreed.

‘But he’s never tried to get me back, has he?’ Kip said it more to himself.

He looked brooding, so Paddy tried to brighten him with an airy: ‘So your boss is away? So is mine.’

‘David’s away?’

‘Yes.’ She told him the reason ... well, that shouldn’t be secret, if he didn’t know he’d know when the National .. Trust stepped in.

‘Fool,’ said Kip. ‘I wouldn’t do any handing over, I’d get good hard cash.’

‘But Kip, Yoothamurra is beautiful.’

‘So is money. I’m sorry, sweetheart, but you simply have to have money.’

‘Yes,’ nodded Paddy with gentle bemusement, ‘I see now why you shouldn’t have been called after a poet.’

‘But you still love me?’

She hesitated at that. He was physically all a girl could ask, and he was gallant and very much the eager lover, but

Fortunately he was not attending.

‘How long will he be away?’ he asked.

‘A week.’

‘Could be better, could be worse.’

‘What do you mean, Kip?’

‘Little greenhorn!’ He kissed her. ‘See this fellow’ ... her drew her along to a box and introduced a splendid stallion ... ‘he’s Standen’s answer to your nag.’

‘Don’t call him that! ’

‘Son of Darkness... oh, I remember, it’s Into the Light. Forgive me, sweetheart.’

When he looked like that at her, Paddy would have forgiven him anything. She touched the silk of the magnificent horse.

‘Name?’ she asked.

‘Peerless Prince.’

‘He looks every inch of it.’

‘He’ll prove it.’ A long quizzical look at Paddy ‘You could help, you know.’

‘Help?’

‘And why shouldn’t you? Every woman should help her man, and I am your man, aren’t I, Padua ?’

‘How could I help?’ she asked.

‘I gave you a stopwatch.’

‘Which I’m returning right now.’ She took it out and handed it to him. ‘That’s really what I came for, Kip.’

‘To return the watch?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you know how to use it. I thought you caught on very quickly.’

‘But I didn’t want it. You pushed it on me. What in heaven would I do with a stopwatch?’

Kip said carefully: 'Time a few nags—I mean time a few boyos for me.’ At a look on her face he said quickly: ‘There’s nothing wrong with that, everyone does it. In Sydney or Melbourne the timing crowd at the rails in the week before a big race is almost as large as when the race is run. It’s perfectly legitimate, you goose.’

'Then why don’t you ’

‘Because I’m not allowed in, that’s why. You are. You belong there.’

‘But I couldn’t time a horse.’

‘Perhaps not openly, I agree a character like David wouldn’t care about that. But you could still do it secretly—just happen to be passing by, that kind of thing. You’d be the last person in the world he’d suspect of doing a thing like that.’

‘You’re wrong,’ said Paddy, ‘I’d be the first.’

‘What?’

‘I’d be the first he’d suspect. You see, he found out I had this thing and ’ But she could not go on. All at once Kip’s face was close to hers, and it wasn’t a pleasant face any more.

‘You damn little fool to let him find cut!’ He fairly gritted it.

‘I couldn’t help it,’ she protested.

‘Of course you could help it. Oh, lor’, preserve me from sweet innocents from this day on! What did he say? What did he suspect?’

‘Suspect?’

‘Suspect of you—and someone else?’

‘I don’t understand you,’ said Paddy.

‘Then that makes two of us.
I
can’t understand such utter imbecility.’

‘Kip, you’re being unfair. It was all out of my hands, and anyway, it turned out all right. I told him it was a Closer Families issue for the phys. ed. part of our training. Foot-racing and all that.’

‘And he swallowed it?'

‘If you mean did he drop the subject, yes.’ Paddy’s voice was cold. She felt cold.

Kip must have sensed her bleakness, for at once he set himself out to be considerate and charming.

‘I’m a pig. I get so worked up over things. Forgive me, please forgive, my sweet. It’s just that I love you so much ... Yes, I do, Padua ... I love you so much I see red if anything gets in my way, my way of escape.’ He added: ‘Escape with you.’

‘I’ve told you, Kip, I love this place.’

‘Yes, and with some money you could have your cake and eat it. We both could. Standen’s up for sale.’

‘Oh,’ said Paddy, slowly seeing light, ‘and you wanted me to time Into the Light so that you could decide how much to outlay on him?’

There was a pause, then Kip said: ‘Why yes, darling, all I was thinking of was a wager. I haven’t much, but if his time was good, I’d put the whole lot on, and at least we’d have a deposit.’ He ruffled Paddy’s acorn hair. .

‘It’s not strictly right,’ said Paddy judiciously, ‘but I suppose on the other hand watching a horse to see how much you
dare
isn’t such a sin.’

‘Darling, you’ve put it perfectly. Padua—forgive?’

She forgave him. She had tea with him in the Standen house. She kissed him back When he kissed her goodbye. When, as a final gesture, he took the watch from her and said: ‘Darling, I’m giving this to one of the hands. Your distress just now really shocked me. Nothing, just nothing is worth your unhappiness,’ Paddy knew she loved Kip. He had capitulated so completely, even though he had wanted desperately to win a few dollars. What a man, she thought, completely forgetting that changed, unpleasant face. Right from the beginning he has helped me. When everyone was down with the virus and I left the stud keys in the box he even took time off from his own work to save the situation.

Yes, Kip was fine, and Kip loved her, and she

I love Kip, Paddy said.

During that week she set herself out to get to know her boys. Her knowledge was only sketchy of the wards so far. She had been a little distressed in the beginning when she had learned that two of them had already left school and that the other two frankly were anticipating their release. She even had written down to Mr Aston about it.

The principal had written back recommending Chapter Seven of their manual to Paddy, and Paddy had studied it assiduously. The aim now, she absorbed, was not to oblige a child to stop at school if he honestly and wholeheartedly did not want that. Many children did not want it, so left and made an equal success of their lives as their more scholarly contemporaries—often a greater success. They seemed to value education more when it was not thrust upon them. Paddy could have backed that up now with her own experience, for Richard and Paul were
very
dedicated evening scholars. They had told her that to get on in a stable you needed something on top as well as elsewhere.

‘I presume by that you mean your head?' Paddy had said once.

‘Yes, and by the other we mean our '

‘Yes, I follow. That will be enough.'

Paddy made it her business to attend the valley school, and inquire about her juniors, and the report was good. Steady boys but not scholastically minded. Never tertiary stuff. The signs were always obvious even quite early in a child’s learning years. The teacher repeated the manual’s view that certain minors do better
alter
they have left their place of learning.

‘They’re very ambitious,’ Paddy was assured.

‘Ambitious about horses?’

‘That needs know-how, too, and they’ll realise and work on that, I think.’

Something on top as well as elsewhere, Paddy had grinned to herself, but she had accepted the fact that it takes both sides to make up a world.

She began going across to the stables with her four, enjoying their enthusiasm and beginning to become very enthusiastic herself. She was amazed at the way Melisande’s foal had grown since Magnus had introduced the little, soft-eyed girl, why, she was now quite a young lady.

‘The sire Quick as Lightning is a whopper of a horse,’ explained Paul, ‘so that accounts for her long legs.’

‘They are very long.’ Paddy was enchanted with the lovely, still gauche, restless child beside the sedate Melisande. ‘She must be very young still and yet she has reached that height.’

‘She’s one,’ said John.

‘Oh, no!’

‘Yes, she is, all horses have their birthdays on the first of August and since the foal was dropped’ ... Paddy smiled secretly at the knowledgeable word ... ‘just before August she’s already one. Even eligible for the Sires Produce this year, and that could lead to anywhere, even the Plateau Plate.’

‘Yes, and Magnus is letting Paul have a first go with her to get her used to the idea. He thinks she’ll even challenge her half-brother Into the Light one day. We
do, too. We expect a lot from Melisande’s Girl—that’s her name. Oh, yes, she’ll put Into the Light into the shade. I say that’s good, isn’t it? Into the Light into the shade.’ Richard had to repeat it to the others.

He showed Paddy how Melisande’s foal had taken to the saddle, but before he could do it someone had to stand beside the blind mare and talk to and soothe her. The most placid of mothers, it only took the absence of her baby to agitate her into a near-hysteria. Paddy had never seen an equal panic in any animal.

What will you do when Melisande’s Girl really races?’ Paddy asked the boys. ‘You can’t always have someone around reassuring her. She’s intelligent, you can see that, she will soon catch on that she’s standing alone.’

‘She’ll have another baby by then, Magnus has mated her with Dashing Duke.’

‘Well now,’ smiled Paddy, patting Melisande’s head and looking into Melisande’s unseeing, cream-covered blind eyes, ‘you’re a chosen girl—nobility no less! ’

Paddy enjoyed watching the boys exercising the filly; then once when Bill, the head man, permitted Paul to do a spell with Into the Light she was as excited as he was. She even wished she had that wretched stopwatch with her, but, glancing up the straight to watch how Paul was doing, she briefly glimpsed a flash of light and knew that someone
had
brought a stopwatch. Also binoculars. She caught the twin glimpse of the lenses. At once there was nothing there, but in that brief moment Paddy, too, had recognised Kip Norris. Well, as she had remarked before, it was not good perhaps, but it was not really a sin.

It was a pleasant week, but somehow a waiting week. Waiting for Magnus David ? Then at the end of the seven days Magnus came back.

The boys greeted him eagerly, they had lots to tell him about every four-footed member of the stable— especially at this juncture the white-haired boy, the Yoothamurra hope, Into the Light.

‘Yes,’ said Magnus, ‘and I’ve been seeing how the white hopes of the big-time stables are guarded in Sydney. Security is very high there. I don’t like to do the same here, after all, we’ve never needed to, but if we did ’

He paused. ‘Have any of you ever seen anyone around?’

‘No,’ they chorused.

Magnus turned to Paddy. ‘You, Miss Travis?’

‘No.’

... So another lie was added to the list.

When the boys and Paddy turned to leave, Magnus kept Paddy back. He was helping himself to a brandy and soda, and his eyes looked narrowly across at her over the balloon glass. He did not offer her anything, not even a sherry, he knew she would refuse, but she felt she should have been asked nonetheless.