They rode to the edge of the city, where they boarded an omnibus drawn by no less than eight horses. There were others bound for the festivities in Parramatta, and soon Tansy had every passenger under seventy singing a lively ditty in perfect rounds. At last, as she sang, Maggie was able to push Reeve McKenna out of her mind.

Darkness had fallen by the time the omnibus reached Parramatta, and Maggie, her throat raw from singing and her bottom sore from the jolting ride over rutted roads, was much relieved.

Now Tansy surrendered the status of leadership to an older girl who had been to the property before. “It’s just down this road, not more than a mile,” the young woman called to her following.

Torches flared in the darkness up ahead, as well as huge bonfires, and Maggie caught the sounds of laughter and loud and spirited preaching on the night air. A delicious aroma wafted from the camp, quite nullifying the underlying stench of horse dung.

“Supper cooking,” Tansy said, reading Maggie’s mind. “It’s Turk’s ’ead, and there’s dampers, too, I’m thinkin’.”

Maggie stopped so suddenly that she collided with someone behind her. Grudgingly, she began walking again. “What in the name of heaven is Turk’s head?” she demanded in a nervous whisper that would brook no evasion.

Tansy laughed. “It’s like a pumpkin, only different,” she answered after a moment. “They stuff it with fresh rabbit meat and onions and roast it underground. And dampers, since you’re bound to ask, is Bushman’s bread. It’s just flour and water, really, but it tastes splendid after bein’ cooked in the ashes the way they do.”

Maggie’s stomach rumbled and she walked a little faster. Soon enough, the group joined hundreds of other people milling about in the companionable torchlit darkness, and they were given plates and eating utensils in return for a few pence.

Abandoned by Tansy, for the moment at least, Maggie filled her plate with dampers and a sizable portion of the rabbit and onion mixture and found a place to sit on the end of a long log facing one of the fires.

The people around her seemed undaunted by the hellfire-and-brimstone preaching coming from one of several tents set up on the grounds; they laughed and told stories as they ate. Vaguely, the happy atmosphere reminded Maggie of other nights, in America, when she’d sat around blazing fires with circus people, listening to their stories.

For a moment she missed her mother and father desperately, but she was soon distracted from this sentimental train of thought, for Reeve McKenna sat down on the log beside her, bold as brass.

“Hello, Maggie,” he said as though he had every right to be there, startling her so that she’d nearly choked on her food.