What makes you
think so, Miss Judy?"

"I can hear it distinctly," she said. "Your eyes are saying it,
and your left ear, not to mention the ends of your moustache."

"Judy!" reproved Meg, whom something had made strangely quiet.

He pretended to be alarmed--shut his eyes, held his left ear,
covered his moustache.

"What can they be saying?" he said.

"'Oh that I was where I would be!
Then I would be where I am not:
But where I am I still must be,
And where I would be I cannot.'

"Meg, I WISH you would stop treading on my toes."

So after that even Mr. Gillet grew gay and talkative, to show he
was enjoying himself, and the bullocks caught the infection of the
brimming spirits behind them, and moved a LEETLE bit faster than
snails. When they had crept along over about ten miles, however,
the slow motion and the heat that beat down sobered them a little.

"Miss Meg, that silver-grey gum before you, guileless of leaves,
indicates Duck Water."

How glad they were to unfold themselves and stretch out their arms
and legs on the ground at last. No one had dreamt riding behind a
bullock team could have been so "flat, stale, and unprofitable," as
it was after the first mile or two.

Then the trolly continued its course.

"I doubt if they will be back before the sun goes down, if they
don't go a little quicker," Mr. Gillet said; "it is lunch-time
now."

They were in a great grassed paddock that at one end fell abruptly
down to the ravine and swamp lands known as "Duck Water."

A belt of great trees made a shade at one side, and along the other
was the barbed-wire fence that showed they had not got away from the
Yarrahappini estate even yet: higher up was the lonely bark hut of
one of the stockmen.

They went up in a body to speak to him before he joined the bullock
team, and to view his solitary dwelling.

Just a small room it was, with a wide fireplace and chimney, where
hung a frying-pan, a billy, a cup, and a spoon. There was a bunk in
one corner, with a couple of blue blankets on it, a deal table and one
chair in the middle of the room. Over the fire-place hung a rough
cupboard, made out of a soap-box, and used to hold rations. From a
nail in the low ceiling a mosquito-net bag was suspended, and the
buzzing flies around proclaimed that it held meat. The walls were
papered with many a copy of "The Illustrated Sydney News", and
"The Town and Country Journal"; there was a month-old "Daily Tele