Summer at Mount Hope Read Free Page B

know how the Widow can go out in public still wearing a bustle,’ said Lilith. ‘They went out of fashion in 1883!’
    â€˜Oh, I know!’ said Phoeba with mock outrage, ‘especially with the fashion around Bay View always of such a high standard!’
    â€˜Her friendship with Mr Titterton is unbecoming,’ said Maude. ‘She’s only friends with him because he’s stock overseer at Overton.’
    â€˜He looks after the sheep when Hadley’s away,’ said Phoeba.
    â€˜I’m sure that’s not all he’s looking after,’ muttered her mother.
    The competition between Maude and her neighbour had started shortly after the Crupps arrived at Bay View, when Mrs Pearson became a widow. At the wake, she had wailed, ‘I am left alone to raise two children.’ And Maude, trying to be encouraging, had said, ‘We were very young when we were deprived of both parents, gone together, and my sister and I turned out splendidly.’
    Convinced her new neighbour was practising oneupmanship, Mrs Pearson had been trying to outdo Maude ever since – skiting of plans for a grander house, purchasing a better horse and carriage, maintaining a thinner waist, all that despite her farm’s and her family’s struggles.
    The only sign of Robert when the women got home was a note: ‘Gone to see about a new horse.’ It was anchored to the kitchen table by an empty wine jug.
    â€˜At last,’ said Maude, pleased.
    But then Lilith told her the back of her dress was wet, and she shrieked and ordered Spot immediately ‘retired’. Phoeba unharnessed him, rubbed his shoulders boisterously with an old sheet where the yoke had rubbed, and led him not to the stables but into the dam paddock. At the gate she put her arms around his thick, black neck and pressed her cheek to his dense stinking hide.
    â€˜You won’t have to drag us to church and back every Sunday and you won’t have to wait in the stockyards at Flynn’s while we shop in Geelong all day. But you and I will still go riding.’
    She opened the gate. The resident rooster and the wild ducks stared as the new tenant walked straight past them into the dam and stood there, looking over to the sheltering peppercorn trees in the corner. He scanned the view then lowered his nose to the water and drank. Phoeba went to muck out his stable for the new horse.
    At Elm Grove, Hadley unharnessed the creamy hack and saddled his tall brown mare before washing his face and hands to join his mother and sister at the kitchen table. Henrietta had made a tomato omelette and lemon flummery – Hadley’s two favourite dishes. He said grace and Henrietta carefully slid a slice of omelette onto his plate and next to his bread: he didn’t like the egg on the bread, it made it soggy.
    The family ate in silence, but the second Hadley put his serviette down the women sprang to action. Henrietta checked his kitbag for his wool classing certificate and letter of recommendation from the Geelong Wool Classing School; his mother retied his necktie, slid it flat under his waistcoat and pinned a clean collar on his shirt.
    â€˜That’s it,’ she said and sunk into her wing-backed chair to catch her breath.
    Hadley stood straight with his hands at his sides. Henrietta bent down and dusted his new boots with her handkerchief.
    â€˜Thank you, both,’ he said. ‘When I have my first pay packet I’ll buy you a present.’
    â€˜A new dress and bonnet would do me the world of good,’ his mother sighed, and they looked at Henrietta. A new dress and bonnet wouldn’t do her any good at all. They would have to think of something else.
    Henrietta’s heart grew thick with pride and her eyes filled with jealous tears watching her little brother ride down the driveway, the shadows of the lush elms moving across his back as he went towards a new life. She was bound to Elm