week
old, that came in with a wild heifer, and Aileen made as much of his
pluck as if it had been a mallee scrubber. The calf baaed and butted
at Jim, as even the youngest of them will, if they've the wild blood
in 'em, and nearly upset him; he was only a bit of a toddler. But Jim
picked up a loose leg of a milking-stool, and the two went at it hammer
and tongs. I could hardly stand for laughing, till the calf gave him
best and walked.

Aileen pulled him out, and carried him in to mother, telling her that he
was the bravest little chap in the world; and I remember I got scolded
for not going to help him. How these little things come back!

'I'm beginning to be afraid,' says George, one evening, 'that it's going
to be a dry season.'

'There's plenty of time yet,' says Jim, who always took the bright side
of things; 'it might rain towards the end of the month.'

'I was thinking the same thing,' I said. 'We haven't had any rain
to speak of for a couple of months, and that bit of wheat of ours is
beginning to go back. The oats look better.'

'Now I think of it,' put in Jim, 'Dick Dawson came in from outside, and
he said things are shocking bad; all the frontage bare already, and the
water drying up.'

'It's always the way,' I said, bitter-like. 'As soon as a poor man's
got a chance of a decent crop, the season turns against him or prices go
down, so that he never gets a chance.'

'It's as bad for the rich man, isn't it?' said George. 'It's God's will,
and we can't make or mend things by complaining.'

'I don't know so much about that,' I said sullenly. 'But it's not as
bad for the rich man. Even if the squatters suffer by a drought and lose
their stock, they've more stock and money in the bank, or else credit to
fall back on; while the like of us lose all we have in the world, and no
one would lend us a pound afterwards to save our lives.'

'It's not quite so bad as that,' said George. 'I shall lose my year's
work unless rain comes, and most of the cattle and horses besides; but
I shall be able to get a few pounds to go on with, however the season
goes.'

'Oh! if you like to bow and scrape to rich people, well and good,' I
said; 'but that's not my way. We have as good a right to our share of
the land and some other good things as they have, and why should we be
done out of it?'

'If we pay for the land as they do, certainly,' said George.

'But why should we pay? God Almighty, I suppose, made the land and th