A dog began to bark excitedly; half a dozen children, with one unsexed garment shaped like a bathing-dress each, turned out to stare at them.  A man of fifty or thereabouts, with a thin, rather tragic face came along the low verandah built all along the front of the Homestead, and looked at them enquiringly.

“Were you in that storm, chum?” he asked.  Louis nodded.

“Come right in!  What, got a girl with you, too?  Enough to finish you off!  Mother!” he added, raising his voice, “Here’s a young woman come to see us.”

A little meek woman in a faded blue frock came out on to the verandah.

“Wherever have you come from?” she asked.  They explained, and she seemed to do ten things at once, while they were speaking.  Louis was irresistibly reminded of a music-hall prestidigitateur.  She was giving directions for more chops to be put into the frying-pan, clean water to be fetched from the creek and put in a kerosene tin in “Jerry’s room,” a cloth laid over the bare boards of the already prepared table, and a tin of jam found from the store.  Marcella felt at home at once.  It was the simple, transparent welcome of Lashnagar again.

The architecture of Loose End was entirely the invention of John Twist.  It consisted of a chain of eight rooms.  As the family grew, another room was leaned against the last one.  One of the boys at Gaynor’s had been heard to express the opinion that Loose End would, some day, reach right across the Continent....  The middle and largest room had two doors at opposite sides.  It was the living-room.  The others, which were either stores, bedrooms, or fowl-pens, had a window in one wall—­glassless, formed of trellis—­and a door in the other.  A boarded platform ran right round the house to a depth of nine feet and the roof of the rooms, projecting over the platform, kept out rain and heat.  There was much corrugated zinc and rough wood, many kerosene tins and boxes in the make-up of Loose End, but all the rooms were miraculously watertight.  The room into which Marcella was shown was a sleeping-room and nothing more.  There were three hammocks slung from wall to wall and one camp-bed still folded up.  But while she was apparently talking to Marcella, Mrs. Twist whisked open a tin trunk, put a white linen cloth on the little table in the corner and, running out of the room, came back with a small, cracked mirror she had borrowed from her own room.

When she came into the living-room, after strenuous work in removing the dust of travel, Marcella found that Louis had been taken possession of by some of the children, and been to the creek for a bathe.  One of them—­apparently a girl, since she was called Betty—­had filled a jam tin with water and put in a bunch of bush roses; the big kerosene lamp hanging from the ceiling shone upon seven cropped heads, seven brown faces and fourteen bare, brown legs swinging from the bench on which the children sat.  Fourteen bright eyes shining in faces polished with soap divided passionate interest between Marcella and the epoch-making pot of jam on the table.  Mr. Twist told the guests to sit down; he made the tea while Mrs. Twist dished up an enormous tin full of chops and fried eggs, placing a china washing-basin full of potatoes beside them.