Read Online Lillipilly Hill by Eleanor Spence - Free Book Online Page B

about Harriet’s friendship with Dinny.
    â€˜Very well,’ he said at last. ‘But be back in fifteen minutes, mind.’
    Delighted with their sudden freedom, Harriet and Dinny hurried along the road, towing Pete between them. It was the first time that Harriet had been beyond the post office, and she looked around her with keen interest. There was not a great deal tosee. The hard white road stretched gradually uphill, overhung by grey-green wattles and bordered by the stiff, sharp clumps that Dinny called ‘sword-grass’. Occasionally a break in the trees revealed a sliprail, and the twin ruts of a cart-track, but no houses were visible from the road.
    â€˜This is the way to Deacon’s Flat,’ said Dinny. ‘It’s about six mile out. Our place is just round the corner.’
    A curve in the road brought them to a rough clearing on the edge of a forest of bluegums. The clearing had been crudely fenced with forked posts and sagging wire, across which the indomitable blackberries thrust their prickly tendrils.
    â€˜Time Pa came home and chopped those blackberries out,’ observed Dinny, helping Pete through the fence. ‘Ma and me can’t do a thing with ’em. Don’t walk on our bean plants.’
    The patch of ground in front of the house had been made into a vegetable garden. There were no flowers, but a thick mat of Wandering Jew stretched on either side of the sawn-off stump that did duty as a doorstep.
    â€˜Come on in,’ invited Dinny, as Pete limped ahead of them, calling for his mother. ‘Ma won’t mind.’
    The house was of unpainted timber, with a shingle roof patched here and there with iron. Harriet followed Dinny through the open door into what appeared tobe the family living-room. As Harriet was to discover, the house boasted only three rooms, and this one served as dining-room, kitchen, bathroom, and parlour. A huge chimney covered most of one wall, with a rusty stove beneath it. Sacks lay here and there on the uneven wood floor, and more sacking hung over one of the two small windows. The other window was the only one in the house which had a complete pane of glass.
    In front of the stove, Dinny’s mother was bathing the baby in a battered tin tub. She was a small woman, not much bigger than Dinny, and stooped from continual hard work. She stared in astonishment at her daughter and the visitor—as Harriet later found out, visitors were extremely rare in the O’Brien household.
    â€˜What’s the matter, Dinny? Are you sick?’
    â€˜No, it’s Pete—he cut hisself,’ explained Dinny, looking round for her brother, who, having reassured himself of his mother’s presence, had retired into a corner with a handful of blackberries picked on the way home.
    â€˜And are you going back to school? Who’s this?’ Mrs O’Brien asked, indicating Harriet.
    â€˜That’s Harriet Wilmot—you know, from up the hill. I told you about her. Can we have something to eat?’
    â€˜There’s bread an’ dripping on the table,’ said Mrs O’Brien, still looking at Harriet, studying her white pinafore and polished boots with embarrassing interest.
    Dinny brought Harriet a thick slice of freshly baked bread, lavishly spread with mutton fat, and sprinkled with salt and pepper. Harriet, feeling distinctly awkward and unwelcome, gazed uncertainly at this delicacy.
    â€˜Eat it,’ commanded Dinny, between mouthfuls. ‘There’s lots more for our dinner.’
    Harriet did as she was bid, and found the snack quite the tastiest she had ever had.
    â€˜I’ll ask Polly to give me some when I go home,’ she said. ‘It’s her baking day.’
    â€˜You’ll have something better than that for your dinner, I’ll be bound,’ declared Mrs O’Brien matter-of-factly. ‘But I’m sure Polly Hopkins’s dripping’s no nicer than ours, all the