Chocolate mousse was served next, with small almond wafers still hot from the oven. And Rose ate with the manners she had watched Flora use as she served at the table and had taught Benjamin to use too — soup spoon curling to the far edge of her plate. She seemed to be enjoying the luncheon, though as a novelty, as a child might like a slippery slide now and then but never want to live on one.

‘Coffee?’ asked Matilda. ‘We will have it in the drawing room.’

Rose had never drunk coffee, as far as Clancy knew — the first and last brew she had made had been thrown away. But she said, ‘Thank you. That would be lovely,’ her accent as pure as Flora’s had been the day she walked down the gangplank, in another world, another time . . .

‘May I go and see the machines now please, Miss Matilda?’ asked Benjamin.

‘Of course. You know where the sheds are? But they won’t be working unless we put the engines on.’ She looked at him pointedly, and Clancy saw the farm manager, a good one, as well as the lovely young woman. ‘And we are not putting the engines on. Maybe later, with your parents.’

‘Yes, Miss Matilda.’ He ran from the room.

‘A grand little chap,’ said Matilda as they moved to the drawing room.

‘Growing tall as a gully gum,’ said Clancy.

‘We’ve just tried to send him to school,’ said Rose impulsively. ‘They refused to have him.’

Matilda was visibly shocked — and quickly outraged. ‘What? That man! Mr Hoffernan needs to know that the law has changed now. I’ll have more than a word to him about that. I’m on the school board,’ she added. ‘You have no idea the trouble I had to convince that man that girls should do advanced mathematics. Luckily his wife is far more sensible than he is. And a better teacher, even if a married woman is not allowed to work officially.’

‘No, please don’t,’ said Clancy as Rose shook her head too. ‘It would be even worse for him there if the school is forced to take him.’ And Mr Hoffernan, Principal, might find some other excuse to expel his son, even manufacture one.

‘You are probably right.’ Matilda sipped her coffee thoughtfully. It neither smelled nor tasted like the drink made from coffee essence. ‘Have you ever thought of having a school at Overflow?’ she asked at last.

Clancy stared. ‘The government would never pay for one. And even if they did,’ he added, ‘the chances are that that school wouldn’t take Benjamin either.’

‘But there are enough young people to warrant having a school?’

‘I reckon,’ said Clancy. There were at least a dozen kids, sons and daughters of the stockmen and from a couple of the small farms nearby.