mber of
extraordinary questions. Could one depend on hearing God's Word
preached of a Sunday? Was it customary for FEMALES to go armed as well
as men? Were the blacks CONVERTED, and what amount of clothing did they
wear?

"Thinks she's comin' to the back o' beyond, does Mely!" chuckled the
old man, and slapped his thigh at the sudden idea that occurred to him
of "takin' a rise out of 'er." "Won't she stare when she gits 'ere,
that's all!"

"Well, now you'll simply HAVE to build," said Polly, after threatening
to write privately to Miss Amelia, to reassure her. Why not move over
west, and take up a piece of ground in the same road as themselves? But
from this he excused himself, with a laugh and a spit, on the score
that no land-sales had yet been held in their neighbourhood: when he
DID turn out of his present four walls, which had always been plenty
good enough for him, he wanted a place he could "fit up tidy"; which it
'ud stick in his throat to do so, if he thought it might any day be
sold over his head. Mahony winced at this. Then laughed, with an
exaggerated carelessness. If, in a country like this, you waited for
all to be fixed and sure, you would wait till Domesday. None the less,
the thrust rankled. It was a fact that he himself had not spent a sou
on his premises since they finished building. The thought at the back
of HIS mind, too, was, why waste his hard-earned income on improvements
that might benefit only the next-comer? The yard they sat in, for
instance! Polly had her hens and a ramshackle hen-house; but not a
spadeful of earth had been turned towards the wished-for garden. It was
just the ordinary colonial backyard, fenced round with rude palings
which did not match, and were mended here and there with bits of
hoop-iron; its ground space littered with a medley of articles for
which there was no room elsewhere: boards left lying by the builders,
empty kerosene-tins, a couple of tubs, a ragged cane-chair, some old
cases. Wash-lines, on which at the moment a row of stockings hung,
stretched permanently from corner to corner; and the whole was
dominated by the big round galvanised-iron tank.

On Boxing Day Purdy got the loan of a lorry and drove a large party,
including several children, comfortably placed on straw, hassocks and
low chairs, to the Races a few miles out. Half Ballarat was making in
the same direction; and whoever owned a horse that was sound in the
wind and anything of a stepper had ent