Off you go now." The Stuffer steamed himself out with the action of an engine drawing a long train of cars, and disappeared round the corner of the house.
Before long he was back, drew himself up alongside an imaginary platform, intimated that his grandmother was in the verandah, and then proceeded to let the steam hiss out of his safety-valve.
Hugh walked across the quadrangle, under the acacia tree, heavy with blossoms, in which a myriad bees were droning at their work, and through the house on to the front verandah, which looked over the wide sweep of river-flat.

Here he found his mother and Miss Harriott, the governess, peeling apples for dumplings--great rosy-checked, solid-fleshed apples, that the hill-country turns out in perfection.

The old lady was slight in figure, with a refined face, and a carriage erect in spite of her years.

Miss Harriott was of a languid Spanish type, with black eyes and strongly-marked eyebrows.

She had a petite, but well-rounded figure, with curiously small hands and feet.