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thinking, I’ll hear more of the Mannerings, and more I certainly must hear when within the month I’ll be Mrs. Mannering junior.
    Future Mrs. Mannering. Again she heard Tim Torrance saying it.
    “I met a road train boss coming up,” she told Hannah. “A Mr. Torrance.”
    “The Territorian.” Hannah smiled warmly. “He’s a wonderful man.”
    “He told me he didn’t truck for the Mannerings.”
    “No. I think ... only think, mind you ... that Mrs. Mannering didn’t approve of the very fast way he came up. I suppose when you’ve been years and years in a place establishing it, over a century, counting your ancestors, making it what it is, it would be galling to see someone new suddenly get so rich.”
    “I don’t think so, I think I’d be glad for them. I know at least I’d admire their spirit.”
    “Is this too much, dear?” Hannah broke in rather hurriedly, displaying a piled plate. “Shall I take something off?”
    “Nothing. I think I’ll even come for seconds.” Hannah beamed, and the meal began.
    Gemma did not mention the Territorian again, but she did get back to the Mannerings, and because they probably were the only people now in her life, Hannah was eager to talk.
    “Mr. Bruce was the most beautiful baby. I told you we both practically arrived here at the same time. I remember thinking when I saw him that if ever I had a child I would like one just like that. Only” . . . a hunch of her shoulders ... “I never married.”
    “You had the care of Bruce?”
    “Always. He went off to college at eight and was there till eighteen, but in between when he was home he was always my responsibility. And he never changed. He was good-looking as a child and he’s good-looking now. Don’t you agree ? But then” . ., archly . . . “of course you would.”
    "I would regardless,” Gemma assured her. “Bruce is a handsome man.” She paused. “Tell me about his sisters.”
    “Janet is barely a year older than her brother. When she was born Mrs. Mannering was naturally very disappointed.”
    “Naturally disappointed?”
    “A man child was wanted, of course. There had to be a Mannering.”
    “I see. Go on.”
    “So she wasted no t me starting Bruce. It was just as well, I often told myself, he was a boy, otherwise . . .” Hannah gave an apologetic cough and gave her attention to eating for a while.
    “Vida came years after. No problem over her since there already was a son. Only a problem now of marriage.”
    “Is that a problem?” asked Gemma.
    “Well, it is in this case. You see, dear, the Mannerings arc not just any family, they’re—they’re—”
    “A dynasty?”
    “I don’t rightly know what you mean by that, but it sounds like what I’m trying to say.”
    “Is Mr. Mannering alive?” .
    “He died years ago.”
    “Yet still Mrs. Mannering holds on to all the trappings.”
    “I don’t rightly know what you mean by that, either, but yes, she does like things done as they always were.”
    “But how would she know? She married into the Mannerings, she wasn’t one herself. Why, she might have been a Smith, a Brown, a Jones.”
    “No, she was a Mannering. The only Mannering. A terrible disappointment to her parents, which probably accounted for her anxiety to have Bruce, a man child, herself.”
    “But I don’t understand . . . she was a Miss Mannering, and now she’s Mrs. Mannering.”
    “A deed poll or something of the sort,” said Hannah vaguely, “for her husband and herself to keep the name alive.”
    “An odd husband,” Gemma said, but Hannah would not comment on that.
    She did, however, say before they closed the subject by mutual consent:
    “The Mannerings were here first of all. They pioneered it. The interior wasn’t' opened up when they came. There were tribes roaming it, there were wild animals, but nothing else at all. It does make you wonder, doesn’t it?”
    “Yes,” said Gemma, but she doubted if she was • wondering the same thing as was Hannah,