What this "thing" was has never been made clear. And while you will find plenty of people in Bacchus Marsh prepared to smirk and roll their eyes about it, they don't seem to know very much about the particulars. Whatever the "thing" was took place when Emma was thrown from her family home into the teachers' college. One would gather that the strength of her reaction against being thrown out from under the parental roof gave rise to fears about her sanity.
Henry Underhill had a full month to consider how he would communicate this to Charles Badgery. The matter so concerned him that he thought of nothing else but how to express it diplomatically. And yet when he saw Charles Badgery help his daughter down from the train, his heart lightened. He saw the way he held her hand, how he fussed about her coat. The boy was infatuated. He smiled. The job would not be so difficult at all.
Charles, for his part, was eager to like Emma's father. He was also preparing himself to confess that his own father was in gaol. He had spent more time worrying about his confession than Henry Underhill had with his. Further, he had seen a photograph of his future father-in-law, and the photograph had frightened him. In the photograph Henry Underhill wore jodhpurs and carried a riding whip. He stood ramrod straight and his countenance was severe and military.
When he saw the smile his future father-in-law showed beneath his moustache, Charles, also, felt relieved. Henry Underhill was not only nicer, but far shorter than the photograph had showed. He was no more than five foot two. He was also energetic and brisk. He was a fellow who liked to get things done. He was also touchingly shy and awkward when he embraced his daughter.
"Right," said Henry Underhill, retreating from the embrace and slapping a rolled newspaper against his thigh. "We need a trolley for your cages. Clancy Shea has a good one in the parcels office. You and me, young fellah, can get the trolley. Emma, mind the birds."
Charles liked this. He didn't think it bossy at all. They walked off down the platform as the train pulled out of the station and laboured up towards Parwan. Soon you could hear the starlings again.
"It's a beaut day," said Charles, by way of approaching the question of Rankin Downs.
"I'm sure you'll be very happy."
"Oh yes," said Charles, who had not expected to be liked. "You bet."
Henry Underhill smiled, and stopped walking. Charles stopped, and smiled too. He was sorry to be so much taller.
"Do you know horses, Chas?"
"I reckon I know enough." Charles kicked a large lump of quartz gravel across the black bitumen platform. He sensed a birds-and-bees talk coming. He was wrong.
"Our Emmie", smiled Henry Underhill, showing perfect white teeth beneath that handsome brush of hair, "is what they call flighty."
Now "flighty" only had two meanings to Charles – either (a) Flirty or (b) Crazy – and Henry Underhill had the disturbing experience of watching the young man change before his eyes. He had, until this moment, stood round-shouldered as he tried to minimize his height. He had stood with his hands politely behind his back and his head in a permanent deferential bow. But now he grew a full six inches and if Underhill did not see his big fists curl he must have witnessed the other symptoms.
"She ain't," said Charles.
"No, no, not like that." Henry Underhill saw how badly he was understood. To him the word "flighty" had suggested something nervous, tentative, even beautiful. It had suggested prancing, spirit, fine breeding and the acceptable nervousness that often accompanies it.
"You may be her Dad, Mr Underhill, but my Emma is not flighty."
In any normal circumstances Henry Underhill would have started to lose his temper here. He could not stand to be contradicted by an underling. He would have had one of his outbursts, gone red in the face and threatened the stock whip.
In any normal circumstances Charles, also, would have begun to shout.
But they were both, although very red in the face, smiling amiably at each other, although they stood so still that the starlings, unaware that they were human, scavenged spilt grain from the platform at their feet.
"Nervous, I meant," said Henry Underhill. "Nervous like. Lacking in confidence."
"I see," said Charles, furious that his beloved had been compared to a horse. It was this that stuck in his mind, this big-haunched image which would stay with him and offend him all his life.
"I'm her Dad. I know my girl."
Charles now noticed the way Henry Underbill's bushy eyebrows pressed down so heavily upon his eyes. It made him look mad. "I'm sure you do, Mr Underhill." He was tired and dirty from the journey, but he could have picked the pound officer up and knocked him down. He had the Badgery temperament and he imagined all sort of things, pushing him off the platform, smacking him across the cheek, cuffing him across the back of the head. "I'm sure you do," he said.
"She's flighty." Henry Underhill frightened the starlings with a single slap of his rolled newspaper and, relieved to have at last done the right thing, he led the walk towards the trolley. "Like a horse."
It took a little while to get the birds and the goanna down to the wagon. When they had, at last, tied everything down firmly, Henry Underhill dropped his first hint about the five hundred quid.
This offended Charles as much as the description of his daughter. He despised the sleazy way Underhill sidled up to the matter, just as they were taking up the tension on the last knot, came breathing up beside him as if he were selling a dirty postcard.
When he was at last sitting on the bench seat beside his fiancee, he silently resolved to pay the whole bond himself, but not to tell Underhill a thing about it. So as they set off at a trot beside the park, Charles began to plan his moves as carefully as if Underhill was an animal who must be trapped. He was already involved in the technique of it, how he must secretly contact the Education Department, arrange a box number at the post office for mail. And no one looking at him, or talking to him, would ever guess that this sort of cunning could coexist with such clumsy, awkward honesty.
They came up to the High School, turned right, and crossed the Werribee River bridge. Seeing Charles so silent, Emma, her big hands folded contentedly on her lap, told her father about the Best Pet Shop in the World.
"Now, Emmie, don't talk fibs," her father said, looking across to Charles and giving him a wink.
"It's no fib, Mr Underhill." Charles took Emma's gloved hand and squeezed it.
"Pish."
Charles did not understand the term and so was silent.
"Posh and pish," said Henry Underhill, belting the horse's rump with the reins. "Have you seen the world?"
Charles did not answer. He concentrated on the arch of plane trees above the road; the trees were losing the last of their leaves and the air was sweet and smoky with the fires of tidy householders.
He squeezed Emma's hand again and although he hurt her she did not complain. She could feel her father's happiness, and she was limp and tired with relief. She had worried that there would be trouble, but now she could see there would be none.
Henry Underhill was indeed happy. His daughter would be married and this piece of insolence would be persuaded to pay part of the bond. "Best in the world," he said, "you're just a boy."
"Yes," said Charles, thinking that he would have to tolerate this odious hairy-nostrilled chap for another thirty days. He was pleased he had left the AJS at Jeparit. He would go back and fetch it.
"Best pet shop in the world!"
Emma smiled. She was so used to her father's teasing she found nothing offensive in it. She had made herself believe, so long ago, that he did not mean to be nasty, that now she could not see just how infuriated he was made by the Best Pet Shop in the World.