re were, a fairish morning's work for one
girl; mothering the calves, bailing up, leg-roping, and all the rest of
it. We could milk well, all three of us, and mother too, when she was
younger. Women are used to cattle in Ireland, and England too. The men
don't milk there, I hear tell. That wouldn't work here. Women are scarce
in the regular bush, and though they'll milk for their own good and on
their own farms, you'll not get a girl to milk, when she's at service,
for anybody else.

One of the young cows was a bit strange with me, so I had to shake a
stick at her and sing out 'Bail up' pretty rough before she'd put her
head in. Aileen smiled something like her old self for a minute, and
said--

'That comes natural to you now, Dick, doesn't it?'

I stared for a bit, and then burst out laughing. It was a rum go, wasn't
it? The same talk for cows and Christians. That's how things get stuck
into the talk in a new country. Some old hand like father, as had been
assigned to a dairy settler, and spent all his mornings in the cowyard,
had taken to the bush and tried his hand at sticking up people. When
they came near enough of course he'd pop out from behind a tree in a
rock, with his old musket or a pair of pistols, and when he wanted
'em to stop 'Bail up, d----yer,' would come a deal quicker and more
natural-like to his tongue than 'Stand.' So 'bail up' it was from that
day to this, and there'll have to be a deal of change in the ways of the
colonies and them as come from 'em before anything else takes its place,
between the man that's got the arms and the man that's got the money.

After we'd turned out the cows we put the milk into the little dairy.
How proud Jim and I used to be because we dug out the cellar part, and
built the sod wall round the slabs! Father put on the thatch; then it
was as cool and clean as ever. Many a good drink of cold milk we had
there in the summers that had passed away. Well, well, it's no use
thinking of those sort of things. They're dead and gone, like a lot of
other things and people--like I shall be before long, if it comes to
that.

We had breakfast pretty comfortable and cheerful. Mother looked pleased
and glad to see me once more, and Aileen had got on her old face again,
and was partly come round to her old ways.

After breakfast Aileen and I went into the garden and had a long talk
over the plan we had chalked out for getting away to Queensland. I got
out a map Starlight had made