So, of course, he had earned his right to the cottage and the daily rations and the pipe that never stirred from his lips.

Two of the station hands lived in the other cottage when they were not out in distant parts of the run.

Close to the house was a long weather-board building with a heavy, padlocked door.

“Oh, let’s go in,” Nell said, attracted by the size of the padlock; “it looks like a treasure-house in a book—­mayn’t we go in, please, little grandma?”

They were exploring all the buildings—­the six children in a body, Mrs. Hassal, whom they all called “little grandma,” much to her pleasure, and Esther with the boy.

“You must go and ask Mr. Gillet,” the old lady said; “he keeps the keys of the stores.  See, over in that cottage near the tank, and speak nicely, children, please.”

“Such a gentleman,” she said in a low tone to Esther, “so clever, so polished, if only he did not drink so.”

Meg and Judy went, with Baby hurrying after them as fast as her short legs would allow.

“Come in,” a voice said, when they knocked.  Meg hesitated nervously, and a man opened the door.  Such a great, gaunt man, with restless, unhappy eyes, a brown, wide brow, and neatly trimmed beard.

Judy stated that Mrs. Hassal had sent them for the keys, if he had no objection.

He asked them to come in and sit down while he looked for them.

Meg was surprised at the room, as her blue eyes plainly showed, for she had only heard him spoken of as the store-keeper.  There were bookshelves, on which she saw Shakespeare and Browning and Shelley and Rossetti and Tennyson, William Morris, and many others she had never seen before.  There were neatly framed photographs and engravings of English and Continental scenery on the walls.  There was a little chased silver vase on a bracket, and some of the flowers from the passion vines in it.  The table with the remains of breakfast on it was as nice on a small scale as the one she had just left in the big cottage.

He came back froth the inner room with the keys.  “I was afraid I had mislaid then,” he said; “the middle one opens the padlock, Miss Woolcot; the brass fat one is for the two bins, and the long steel one for the cupboard.”

“Thank you so much.  I’m afraid we disturbed you in the middle of your breakfast,” Meg said, standing up and blushing because she thought he had noticed her surprise at the bookshelves.

He disclaimed the trouble, and held the door open for them with a bow that had something courtly in it, at least so Meg thought, puzzling how it came to be associated with salt beef by the hundredweight and bins of flour.  He watched them go over the grass—­at least he watched Meg in her cool, summer muslin and pale-blue belt, Meg in her shady chip hat, with the shining fluffy plait hanging to her waist.

Judy’s long black legs and crumpled cambric had no element of the picturesque in them.