Relief flooded her. ‘Thank you. I’ll set some water to heat while you do what needs to be done,’ she said.

Amid furious clucking from the hens, she cornered the rooster and saying a silent apology to the bird, she delivered him to the hands of his executioner. There was one short, sharp squawk as she turned her back, and when she returned, Mr Hunt stood washing his hands in the old pan she kept by the back door. The late king of the coop lay on the stump, limp and headless, while his harem hid under the nearest bush.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘It seems a small repayment for your hospitality, Mrs Greaves. I’d not have taken you for having such a tender heart.’ He sat down on the back step with his leg stretched out and rubbed his thigh with a grimace.

Adelaide sat beside him. ‘I was not born to face the realities of the food on my table, Mr Hunt.’

‘Unlike me,’ he said.

‘You?’

‘A farm boy, born and raised.’ He clenched and unclenched his fingers, rubbing the back of each hand as if they were still stained with the fowl’s blood. It seemed an odd gesture from a man inured to bloodshed by war.

As if aware of her scrutiny, he stilled his hands and studied her for a long moment. ‘No customers today?’ he asked.

‘I closed the post office at lunch.’

‘How did you come to be the Maiden’s Creek postmistress?’

‘Luck. When I arrived in Melbourne, I knew I had to find work and I took a position in the General Post Office in Melbourne. They were looking for people to learn the telegraph and I volunteered.’ She paused. ‘When they advertised the position in Maiden’s Creek, I put in my application.’

‘But you’re a woman?’

‘How observant, and you are right, they did not want a woman for the role, but I was by far the best candidate so they had no choice but to offer it to me. Very few people are trained in the telegraph and fewer still are willing to take a role in a town such as this. My turn to ask you a question. Did you leave the farm because of the war?’

‘No. I won a scholarship to university and I made good my escape long before the war of northern aggression.’

Adelaide had never heard it referred to as that and as if to answer her unspoken thoughts, he added, ‘I am being ironic. The South brought the war upon itself.’

‘Do you miss the farm?’ she asked.

Mr Hunt leaned forward and scratched his chin. ‘I do. There is something honest in that connection with the land. It is about creation, not this …’ He waved a hand at the blighted landscape about them, stripped of trees to feed the hungry boilers. ‘This is destruction. This is the rape of the earth.’