Meggie's hair was braided these days

 "Well, off you go, then. But here, take this and spend it on yourself. Have a good time, and if you get drunk don't let your mother find out." Frank stared at the crisp blue five-pound note in his hand, longing to tear it into shreds and fling them in Paddy's face, but custom won again; he folded it, put it in his fob pocket and thanked his father. He couldn't get out of the bar quickly enough.
  In his best blue suit, waistcoat buttoned, gold watch secured by a gold chain and a weight made from a nugget off the Lawrence goldfields, Paddy tugged at his celluloid collar and looked down the bar for a face he might recognize. He had not been into Gilly very often during the nine months since he arrived on Drogheda, but his position as Mary Carson's brother and heir apparent meant that he had been treated very hospitably whenever he had been in town, and that his face was well remembered. Several men beamed at him, voices offered to shout him a beer, and he was soon in the middle of a comfortable little crowd; Frank was forgotten.
  Meggie's hair was braided these days, no nun being willing (in spite of Mary Carson's money) to attend to its curling, and it lay in two thick cables over her shoulders, tied with navy-blue ribbons. Clad in the sober navy-blue uniform of a Holy Cross student, she was escorted across the lawn from the convent to the presbytery by a nun and handed over to Father Ralph's housekeeper, who adored her.
  "Och, it's the wee bairn's bonnie Hielan' hair," she explained to the priest once when he questioned her, amused; Annie wasn't given to liking little girls, and had deplored the presbytery's proximity to the school. "Come now, Annie! Hair's inanimate; you can't like someone just because of the color of her hair," he said, to tease her.
  "Ah, week she's a puir wee lassie-skeggy, ye ken."
  He didn't ken at all, but he didn't ask her what "skeggy" meant, either, or pass any remarks about the fact that it rhymed with Meggie. Sometimes it was better not to know what Annie meant, or encourage her by paying much attention to what she said; she was, in her own parlance, fey, and if she pitied the child he didn't want to be told it was because of her future rather than her past.
  Frank arrived, still trembling from his encounter with his father in the bar, and at a loose end.
  "Come on, Meggie, I'll take you to the fair," he said, holding out his hand.
  "Why don't I take you both?" Father Ralph asked, holding out his. Sandwiched between the two men she worshipped, and hanging on to their hands for dear life, Meggie was in seventh heaven. The Gillanbone showground lay on the banks of the Barwon River, next door to the racecourse. Though the floods were six months gone, the mud had not completely dried, and the eager feet of early comers had already pulped it to a mire. Beyond the stalls of sheep and cattle, pigs and goats, the prime and perfect livestock competing for prizes, lay tents full of handicrafts and cooking. They gazed at stock, cakes, crocheted  shawls, knitted baby clothes, embroidered tablecloths, cats and dogs and canaries.
  On the far side of all this was the riding ring, where young equestrians and equestriennes cantered their bobtailed hacks before judges who looked, it seemed to a giggling Meggie, rather like horses themselves. Lady riders in magnificent serge habits perched sidesaddle on tall horses, their top hats swathed with tantalizing wisps of veiling. How anyone so precariously mounted and hatted could stay unruffled upon a horse at anything faster than an amble was beyond Meggie's imagination, until she saw one splendid creature take her prancing animal over a series of difficult jumps and finish as impeccable as before she started. Then the lady pricked her mount with an impatient spur and cantered across the soggy ground, reining to a halt in front of Meggie, Frank and Father Ralph to bar their progress. The leg in its polished black boot hooked round the saddle was unhooked, and the lady sat truly on the side of her saddle, her gloved hands extended imperiously. "Father! Be so kind as to help me dismount!"
  He reached up to put his hands around her waist, her hands on his shoulders, and swung her lightly down; the moment her heels touched the ground he released her, took her mount's reins in his hand and walked on, the lady beside him, matching his stride effortlessly. "Will you win the Hunting, Miss Carmichael?" he asked in tones of utter indifference.