“I wish this Mr Fraser had telegraphed to us, Edward. I would have left Marumbah the same day, and gone to poor Tom to nurse him.”
“Would you, old girl?” and the big man rose from his seat and kissed her, his thick, heavy beard spreading out over her shoulders.
“Indeed, I would. And now it is no use my going, is it?”
“Not a bit, Lizzie. You hear what Fraser says--'He is getting on splendidly, and the left eye is saved.' Let me read it all over again; shall I?”
“Do,” and her pale, clear-cut features flushed; “it makes me feel as if I were there and saw the whole dreadful sight. Don't cry any more, Mary dear. Uncle Tom is getting better.”
“If Jim had been with him, it wouldn't have happened,” said the child, suppressing her sobs, and wiping her streaming eyes; “Jim would have been sure to have seen the alligator coming before any one else, and done something. I am quite sure that even if he met a bunyip he would not be afraid; but would fight it.”
“I'm dead certain of it, Mary,” said Westonley, as he put his big hand upon the child's head, and then taking up Fraser's letter, he again read it aloud. It described in simple language Gerrard's desperate struggle with the alligator, then went on about his courage and fortitude under agonising pain, for the wounds caused by alligators' claws invariably set up an intense and poisonous inflammation, and take a long time to heal, and concluded by saying, “as long as life lasts, I shall never forget that only for his heroic conduct I should now be a childless man, and my daughter have died a death too fearful to contemplate.”
Gerrard's letter was in his usual laconic style.
“Dear Ted,--I have bought a little station here called Kaburie--good cattle country with about 2500 head on it. In getting a mob across a creek I was mauled by an alligator' and if it had not been for my friend Fraser--in whose house I am now staying for a week or so--shooting the beast, it would have had me. It is nothing serious, so don't worry over me--some deep cuts on my face, that is all, and Mr Fraser and his daughter (a charming girl) are coddling me up. Jim is with me. I left him with your old friend Lacey at Port Denison, but the young beggar wouldn't stay when he heard that I had had an accident. He is making great running with pretty Miss Fraser. Give my love to Lizzie and Mary, and tell the latter that I trust her bear is now thoroughly convalescent Jim will write to Mary by next mail. He went out early this morning fishing with Miss F------, and did not know that the mailman was calling to-day.--Yours ever, Tom.”