district she rented a two-roomed cottage and
took in dressmaking.

Dressmaking didn't pay so well in the bush then as it did in the old
diggings days when sewing-machines were scarce and the possession of one
meant an independent living to any girl--when diggers paid ten shillings
for a strip of "flannen" doubled over and sewn together, with holes for
arms and head, and called a shirt. Mrs Douglas had a hard time, with her
two little girls, who were still better and more prettily dressed than
any other children in Bourke. One grocer still called on her for orders
and pretended to be satisfied to wait "till Mr Douglas came back," and
when she would no longer order what he considered sufficient provisions
for her and the children, and commenced buying sugar, etc., by the
pound, for cash, he one day sent a box of groceries round to her. He
pretended it was a mistake.

"However," he said, "I'd be very much obliged if you could use 'em,
Mrs Douglas. I'm overstocked now; haven't got room for another tin of
sardines in the shop. Don't you worry about bills, Mrs Douglas; I can
wait till Douglas comes home. I did well enough out of the Imperial
Hotel when your husband had it, and a pound's worth of groceries won't
hurt me now. I'm only too glad to get rid of some of the stock."

She cried a little, thought of the children, and kept the groceries.

"I suppose I'll be sold up soon meself if things don't git brighter,"
said that grocer to a friend, "so it doesn't matter much."

The same with Foley the butcher, who had a brogue with a sort of
drawling groan in it, and was a cynic of the Mitchell school.

"You see," he said, "she's as proud as the devil, but when I send round
a bit o' rawst, or porrk, or the undercut o' the blade-bawn, she thinks
o' the little gur-r-rls before she thinks o' sendin' it back to me.
That's where I've got the pull on her."

The Giraffe borrowed a horse and tip-dray one day at the beginning of
winter and cut a load of firewood in the bush, and next morning, at
daylight, Mrs Douglas was nearly startled out of her life by a crash at
the end of the cottage, which made her think that the chimney had fallen
in, or a tree fallen on the house; and when she slipped on a wrapper and
looked out, she saw a load of short-cut wood by the chimney, and caught
a glimpse of the back view of the Giraffe, who stood in the dray with
his legs wide apart and was disappearing into the edge of the scrub; and
soon the rapi