Read Sarah Thornhill for Free Online Page B

and people rude and quick, and the gentry running you down on the street prancing along on their horses. Caught a glimpse of the governor, all gold braid and a cocked hat with a feather, that was exciting for two girls from the Hawkesbury, but a few days later and we was back home and the damn bread and mutton having to be done over and over and the same old dishes washed and put away morning noon and night.
    That speckled dog was a smart creature. Didn’t care one way or the other about Dolly Thornhill. But knew that wherever she was, Jack would be there too, sooner or later. If I went to the cave, the dog pushed through the bushes and sat up with me on the sandy floor so I’d feel its warm breath on my ear. If I went down to the jetty it lay on the boards watching down the river the way I was doing, one black ear cocked up.
    I’d sit with Pa on the verandah, he let me have the telescope if I didn’t ask too often. Black shiny mangroves, wet rocks, water. You could see every ripple through the glass. If there’d of been a boat you’d of seen all the faces on deck.
    Every day that passed was a day I was waiting for Will and Jack to be home.
    I was sitting on the front steps one afternoon, the dog nosing up and down the gravel path and Pa behind me on the bench. I was staring out at nothing, wishing but not knowing what I was wishing, when I heard the bench fall over, Pa jumping up so quick.
    Will! Will’s home! he shouted.
    Pushed past me, took the steps two at a time, out the gate and down the road with that funny crooked run he had and the telescope still in his hand. Didn’t care that the men were staring at Mr Thornhill with his boots flapping from where he hadn’t taken the time to lace them up.
    I was halfway down the track after him when the dog ran past and when I got to the jetty it was standing out on the end, straining towards the boat, but it was still way off down the end of the reach. The sail hanging slack from the yard, the people on board no bigger than ants. One of them must be Will. And one of the others would be Jack.
    That thought—Jack!—brought something into my throat, as if I’d run too hard. I knew then what I hadn’t known all those months of mooning about. It was Jack I was waiting for.
    There was a crowd on the jetty now, Mary and Ma and Bub, all telling each other how long Will and Jack had been gone and how slow they was coming up the reach, and was the tide on the turn or would they have to get out the oars. On and on they went, and the boat not seeming to move.
    Give us the glass, Pa, I said. So’s I can see.
    The eyepiece full of sky, then bush. I slanted down too fast, missed the boat. Tracked along those blue ripples and there was the old grey wood of Emily , and up on the bow, leaning forward as if to get to us quicker, there he was. Jack. Black hair glistening in the sun, beard so thick it hid most of his face. Looking straight at me. I waved and he waved back, even though I must of been nothing more than a shape with an arm coming out of it.
    When Emily got up to us at last, Jack jumped across the last yard of water, didn’t wait for them to tie the boat up. So light on his feet for such a big man. Landed next to me neat as a cat.
    Well, he said. It’s Sarah Thornhill, I do believe.
    The same as I’d remembered, his eyes crinkled up with smiling.
    Dolly Thornhill, stuck for words! That was a new one.
    The speckled dog ran in circles with its tail going like a carpet-beater. Pa slapping Will’s shoulders, Will slapping Pa’s, the two of them shouting at each other.
    Still want to marry me, Sarah Thornhill? The humour of it was on Jack’s face, he took a breath, his mouth started the words. But then he saw the new shape of me, changed his mind. The words hung between us.
    It was nothing. A silence the length of a heartbeat, and Jack’s eyes looking into mine. But it said everything is different now .
    When