Clementine calculated. ‘If all the sheep are ewes and they all have a lamb, does that mean we’ll have one hundred and forty thousand sheep sometimes? Or thirty-five thousand sheep and their lambs?’

Ezekiel gloried in his granddaughter’s intelligence. It seemed he loved Clementine enough to accept her as his heir, even if the Clancy name would be lost when she married. Who could not love Clementine, with her curls and grins of utter joy? The way she galloped on her pony now, totally unafraid, singing at the top of what he had to admit was a most untuneful voice. And her questions . . .

‘Daddy, why is the sky blue?’

‘I don’t know, sweetheart.’

‘Who does know then?’

‘I don’t know that either.’

‘Auntie Maria might know.’

‘Auntie Maria’s house isn’t finished yet, darling. We’ll visit her when it is.’

Maybe Maria could tell Clementine why the sky was blue, why black snakes laid eggs but browns laid babies, and how the fantails found their way back to Overflow every year. But that was at least a year away, for Maria and Ethelred had travelled the bush awhile before selecting their house site.

Could Flora care for Clementine till then, without either Rose or Maria to help? Clementine was too bored to stay obediently in the house with her mother, with the limited stories her mother had to read to her. It hadn’t seemed to occur to Flora that her daughter needed to learn more than table manners, such as how to write a neat hand, or geography — a subject that would engage her curious mind.

He should write to Maria and ask her to recommend suitable school books for a child. He’d take her down to the river today so she could paddle in the shallows. She’d enjoy that. And take her out with him more often as he worked so she was not swallowed up in Flora’s silence.

Six hundred pounds for a horse, he thought. That would have been enough for Flora and him to have lived in comfort in Sydney for several years if they’d lived relatively simply, not entertaining but accepting the invitations that would still flow in for ‘Lady’ Flora.

And now the horse was gone.

He found Flora huddled on the sofa in the parlour, looking at nothing, her hands idle, while Clementine demolished a piece of coloured paper, making what might, if you had enough imagination, be a rose. She looked up at him.

‘Did you find Rose, Papa?’

‘No, darling, not yet.’

‘Why did she leave?’

He glanced at Flora. But Flora made no sign she had heard the question. ‘You know how Rose’s skin is dark, darling?’

Clementine nodded.

‘I think she wanted to visit her own people.’

‘Will she come back?’

‘Maybe.’