“But it isn’t enough to get out of Sydney with,” he said petulantly.

“Yes it is.  I’m going to find work for us,” she informed him.

“What sort of work?”

“Anything—­farm work is all I know.  But probably I could cook.  Mrs. King has told me a good many things to make.”

“But, Marcella—­” began Louis, almost tearfully.

She turned to him quickly.

“Louis, you’re to leave this to me.  On the Oriana you said you would.  I’m your doctor and I’m prescribing treatment.  I may be wrong, but give me a trial, anyway.  I don’t want to boss you.  I want you to be free.  But you can’t till you’ve learnt how to walk yourself.”

And she would say no more, but going to several agencies in Pitt Street put down their names.  She told them she came from a farm in Scotland, and they seemed very pleased to see her.  But when she added that she was married to an Englishman who had a public-school education they became sceptical.

“What can he do?” they asked.  She hesitated.

“Rouseabout?” asked the clerk.  When they explained that this meant being Jack-of-all-trades on an up-country station, Marcella, in a spirit of sheer mischief, said that would suit Louis well.  She liked the busy sound of the word, too.  But though she called at the agencies day after day, no one seemed to want her.  At last a clerk, an elderly, pleasant woman explained.

“They’re afraid to engage newly married couples on up-country stations where there are not too many hands for fear they go having children—­you see, that puts a woman out of action for a while and throws all the work out of gear.  If you were forty-five or thereabouts, now.”

This seemed an astonishing state of things to Marcella.

The days passed.  Louis got up at Christmas time in the blazing heat of midsummer, looking a shadow of himself.  He began to take a greedy interest in doing things; he made a cupboard for the crockery lent them by Mrs. King; he made it very well, very carefully, hampered by lack of tools.  He read hungrily all the books Dr. Angus sent to Marcella, especially lectures and scientific books.  He seemed to disagree on principle with whatever she said, and they had many pleasantly heated arguments.  His mother sent him papers—­the “Referee,” “Punch,” the “Mirror.”  He cut out many of the “Punch” pictures and tacked them up beside the Landseer print, side by side with Will Dyson’s cartoons from the “Bulletin” that Marcella liked.  When there was nothing to read or do he told Marcella yarns of his past, until she grew to know his people very well.  Whenever he felt tempted to lie to her he pulled himself up pathetically, and she saw that he was really trying to keep his tongue under control.  When everything else palled they played Noughts and Crosses, or Parson’s Cat, or Consequences.  Mrs. King had asked them repeatedly to play cards with her “young chaps” in the kitchen, but Louis was too frightened to face them.  He was too shy to go downstairs to carry up water or coal for Marcella, and she had to do it herself; in the undermined state of his nerves it was torture to him to face people, and he became petulant if asked to do what he called “menial tasks.”  Marcella understood him:  Mrs. King had no hesitation in saying he was abominably lazy.