ound the remains of a meal and some empty whisky bottles
and glasses. After considerable shouting and knocking at doors along
the passage, he succeeded in arousing the landlady, who came in,
buttoning her blouse. Her obviously dyed yellow hair was in a
dishevelled state, her eyes were heavy and her face sodden. She had
evidently been sleeping off the effects of drink.

'Had a night of it, I suppose, Mrs Hurst?' observed McKeith glumly.
'This is a nice sort of place to show a lady into.'

The woman burst out on the defensive, but McKeith silenced her.

'That'll do. Clear away all that mess and let us have a clean cloth and
some tea. And I say, if you have got a decent room for my wife to wash
the dust off and take a bit of a rest in, I'll be obliged.'

The landlady blinked her puffed eyelids, muttered an uncourteous
rejoinder and went off with some of the debris from the table. Bridget
laughed blankly. She looked so small and flower like, so absolutely
incongruous with her surroundings, that the humour of it all struck
McKeith tragically.

'Good Lord! I wonder what your opinion is of this show! Here is the
beginning of what is called the Never-Never Country, my dear. Do you
want to go back again to Government House?'

'No, I don't,' and she touched him to the heart's core by putting her
little hand in his.

'That's my Mate,' said he, his blue eyes glistening. 'But I'll tell you
what I think of your splendid pluck when we're quit of these beastly
townships, and have gone straight into Nature. Now, I've got to go and
see after the buggy and find my boys, and I shall have all my work cut
out to be ready in an hour. You just make the best of things, and if
the bedroom is impossible spread out my poncho and take a rest on that
sofa there, and don't be frightened if you hear any rowdiness going on.'

The bedroom was impossible, and the sofa seemed equally so. Bridget
drank the coarse bush tea which the landlady brought in, and was glad
that the woman seemed too sulky to want to talk. Then she sat down at
the window and watched the life of the township--the diggers slouching
in for drinks, the riders from the bush who hung up their horses and
went into the bar, the teams of bullocks coming slowly down the road
and drawing up here or at some other of the nineteen public houses 'to
wet the wool,' in bush vernacular. She counted as many as twenty-four
bullocks in one of the teams, and watched with interest the family life