I managed to get it written, and I hope I have done him justice:
James put the play he’d been trying to read on the games table Elizabeth had bought from a deceased estate in Hobart Town, he used the arms on the giltwood chair she had ordered from London to push himself upright, and announced he was going to lay down and rest until supper. Elizabeth watched as he climbed the stairs, almost laboriously, almost as if he was taking as long as possible to reach his destination. She thought his behaviour was odd, but dismissed her concerns as an overreaction to his age, he was after all still working the farm.
On hearing the report of a pistol, the mother and daughter hurried to the stairs; Young Elizabeth forgot how sick she felt, picked up her skirts and took the steps two at a time. The sight of her father’s mutilated body, the hole where the bullet had entered his chest, the blood gushing from the wound and oozing down the edges of the bed to the floor, was more than a sheltered, protected child could suffer; she fainted just as her mother rushed in to the room.
