acks were like ploughed, an' then have to run the
twenty miles home. Me father used to come in every day and fling
hisself down an' cry and sob as if his heart would break, an' say he'd
rather starve than stay in the police. Now, the Parrys got up an' one
of them had a 'Sir' sent out to his name, and you'll see 'em writ
about as one of the few _old_ families; and I hold that Dawn come from
better stock than them, and has more to be proud of in her
grandfather--he had some heart in him. An' Lord! there's Miss Flipp's
uncle, one look at him ought to be sufficient warnin' to any girl.
The likes of him is common among the swells--too much stuffin' an'
drinkin' an' debochary. Nice thing if Dawn married a swell an' he
developed into a old pig like that. I can tell you another great
family of swells, the Goburnes--entertained the Royalties w'en they
was out here, an' are such bugs one of 'em married the Governor's
daughter. They got up about the same way. In the old days w'en things
were carelesser an' land wasn't much, the old cock of all had the
surveyor that was gone on his daughter measurin' the land, an' got him
to slice in great pieces by false measurement, an' worked the lives
out of convicts--as big a brute as the Parrys. That's the breed of the
swells, an' I have a horror of them. The people as I consider ought to
be the swells in this country is them that came out first, the free
emigrants, and honestly worked up the colony with their own hands, an'
their children done the same for four or five generations--them's the
only proper Australian aristocracy we've got. That's why I have sich a
contempt for this Rooney-Molyneux, Mrs Bray was tellin' of; only times
is different he'd be the same, he's got the sort of pride that thinks
his wife is a black gin because she was only a milliner."

Out past the placard advertising Mrs Clay's boats gleamed the
highroad, and from where we walked could be seen a now unused old
stone milepeg, carved in Roman lettering, its legend differing
somewhat from that in modern figures painted on the miniature wooden
post by which it had been deposed. It was one of many relics of the
dead and gone convicts who had done giant pioneer labour in this broad
bright land in the days when Grandma Clay's mother had been young.
Fine old grandma, daughter of a fine old dad who had wept for the
cruelty endured by the men who had worked in chain-gangs and were
flogged under his superintendence, and thinking