It had been through this turning of phrases that Flossie’s husband and her secretary came to understand each other more thoroughly. Flossie was asked by a weekly journal to contribute an article on the theme of women workers in the back country. She was flattered, said Terence, but a bit uneasy. She came into the study and talked a good deal about the beauty of women’s work in the home. She said she thought the cocky-farmer’s wife led a supremely beautiful existence because it was devoted to the basic fundamentals (she occasionally coined such phrases) of life. ‘A noble life,’ Flossie said, ringing for Markins, ‘they also serve—’ But the quotation faltered before the picture of any cocky-farmer’s wife, whose working-day is fourteen hours long and comparable only to that of a man under a sentence of hard labour. ‘Look up something appropriate, Miss Lynne. Arthur darling, you’ll help her. I want to stress the sanctity of women’s work in the high country. Unaided, alone. You might say matriarchal,’ she threw at them as Markins came in with the cup of patent food she took at eleven o’clock. Flossie sipped it and walked up and down the room throwing out unrelated words: ‘True sphere…splendour…heritage…fitting mate.’ She was called to the telephone but found time to pause in the door and say, ‘Away you go, both of you. Quotations, remember, but not too highbrow, Arthur darling. Something sweet and nature and telling.’ She waved her hand and was gone.

The article they wrote was frankly heretical. They had stood side by side in the window and looked over the plateau to the ranges, now a clean thin blue in the mid-morning sunshine.