She fished in deep pools for the great, sleepy, hundred-pound cod-fish that sucked down bait and hook, holus-bolus, and then were hauled in with hardly any resistance, and lived for days contentedly, tethered to the bank by a line through their gills.
In these amusements time passed pleasantly enough, and by the time school-work was resumed Mary Grant had become one of the family.
Of Hugh she at first saw little.

His work took him out on the run all day long, looking after sheep in the paddocks, or perhaps toiling day after day in the great, dusty drafting-yards.

In the cool of the afternoon the two girls would often canter over the four miles or so of timbered country to the yards, and wait till Hugh had finished his day's work.

As a rule, Poss or Binjie, perhaps both, were in attendance to escort Miss Harriott, with the result that Hugh and Mary found themselves paired off to ride home together.

Before long he found himself looking forward to these rides with more anxiety than he cared to acknowledge, and in a very short time he was head over ears in love with her.
Any man, being much alone with any woman in a country house, will fall in love with her; but a man such as Hugh Gordon, ardent, imaginative, and very young, meeting every day a woman as beautiful as Mary Grant, was bound to fall a victim.