He will be away for some time.
Meanwhile, dear Mrs.Gordon, for the sake of old times, do what you can for the girl.

I expect she has been brought up with English ideas.

I can't get her to say much to me, which I daresay is my own fault.

After she has been with you for a bit, I will come up and stay for a time at the station.
Yours very truly, W.G.GRANT.
Reading this letter called back the whole panorama of the past--the old days when she and her husband were struggling in the rough, hard, pioneering life, and the blacks were thick round the station; the birth of her children, and the ups and downs of her husband's fortunes; then the burial of her husband out on the sandhills, and her flight to this haven of rest at Kuryong.

Though she had lost interest in things for herself, she felt keenly for her children, and was sick at heart when she thought what this girl, who was to wield such power over them, might turn out to be.