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mother’s real discouraged and worried—and then I hear the children’s voices and I brighten. When I go home again I tell her little things they’ve said and done and she’s bright, too. We’re the pair of us the same as Dr. Jerry. The home is in our blood.”
    Cathy replaced her brush beside its comb. “Elvira, I’ve been thinking about tomorrow. How will we manage?”
    “You’re not to worry your head about that. Dr. Jerry said so. If I know Dr. Jerry he’s been on the phone ringing up an agency even before he took his hat off. And him just back from England, too!”
    “How have you managed all along? I mean, would you and this Mrs. Jessopp have been sufficient to look after the children?”
    “Oh, yes. We have women coming in to do the housework, and the laundry always goes out. It’s only been an aunty we’ve lacked, but seeing we were only ten the board decided to wait till you came, Miss Trent, and now I’ve seen you I can’t say how glad I am they did. It’s not good for kiddies having changes. They want roots—good roots. The moment I spoke with Dr. Jerry I knew he was pleased about something, even if he was displeased at the same time about Jessopp. Then the moment I saw you I knew why.”
    Cathy did not have the heart to contradict her. The black boot button eyes were too swimming with belief in her precious Dr . Jerry. If Dr. Malcolm had looked pleased, Cathy told herself, it must have been with the financial state of his surgery, not with the new housemother for Redgates. Apart from that brief hour when they had worked side by side filling interiors and washing exteriors of small girls, the atmosphere between them had been distinctly unfriendly.
    At length, on Elvira’s insistence, she got into bed. “I’m going to tuck you in. You’re little more than a girl yourself, and you a supervisor.”
    “I’m twenty-one, Elvira.” Cathy’s voice was sleepy. She was tired, she discovered.
    She had a dim memory of ministering hands adjusting a blanket, drawing over a mosquito net, then the next moment the room was in darkness and the footsteps were descending. But before they reached the last stair Cathy was asleep.
    She awoke to Elv i ra again, this time with an early pot of tea. Daylight was pushing through the chintz curtains. She could see pink morning clouds caught in the frame of the window like bright butterflies in a net.
    “Am I late, Elvira?”
    “Of course not. I’m an early riser. I always get up at daybreak. I’m fond of my cuppa, you see. All Australians are. As I brewed it I thought, ‘I wonder if Miss Trent is one of those people who are ready for a cuppa at any tick of the clock.’ ”
    “Miss Trent is, and Miss Trent’s name is Cathy.”
    “Oh, I couldn’t call you that.” Elvira shook a decisive head. “I tell you what, I’ll call you Aunty Cathy like the girls, though by age it is you who should be calling me grandmother .”
    “Oh, Elvira,” laughed Cathy. She leaned back against the pillows after the woman had gone and enjoyed the piping hot brew, watching the cloud butterflies and wondering what the day would hold.
    A quick shower—one thing, the hot water was really hot—a gay cotton dirndl and it was time to rouse the girls. She did not know whether Redgates did this with a gong or not, but Rita, opening an interested eye, told her to switch on the radio. “As soon as Peter Rabbit comes on the bubs wake up to listen, and we older ones get our wash first so we’ll be back for ‘Freda of the Fifth.’ ”
    Cathy nodded, paying mental homage to the powers of radio. She decided to write back to England about this easy solution to that hardest of a housemother’s tasks, the waking up of the charges.
    She inspected young necks, fingernail s , backs of ears, and helped with ribbons, shoelaces and fastenings while Peter Rabbit kept the eighteen small fry quiet but wide eyed in their little cots.
    The “Freda of the Fifth” ousted Peter, and the eighteen were