She wanted to cast away from her the dreadful thought his appearance had suddenly evoked.

She picked up the cabbage leaf with the fruit and flung them over the railings into a flower bed, where the butcher-birds and the bower-birds quarrelled over them, and the big, grey bird in the gum tree on the other side of the fence cachinnated in derisive chorus to Bridget's burst of hysterical laughter.
A little later Maggie came out from the bedroom with some letters in her hand.
'I've laid holt on your mail, Ladyship, turning out your room.

I expect you forgot all about it.' Yes, she had forgotten, absolutely; it seemed years since Harry the Blower had passed by and Willoughby Maule had departed.

She languidly inspected the envelopes.

Nothing among them of any importance--except one.
It was a blue telegraph-service envelope, and had been forwarded on by the postman from Crocodile Creek, the nearest telegraph station.