ought her to the four-roomed cottage where Ned lived
with wife and children. Or had lived, till lately. He had been missing
from his home now for over a week. On the last occasion of his being in
Melbourne with the carrying-van, he had decamped, leaving the boy who
was with him to make the return journey alone. Since then, nothing
could be heard of him; and his billet in the Agency had been snapped up.

"Or so they say!" said his wife, with an angry sniff. "I don't believe
a word of it, Mary. Since the railway's come, biz has gone to the dogs;
and they're only too glad to get the chance of sacking another man."

Polly looked untidier than ever; she wore a slatternly wrapper, and her
hair was thrust unbrushed into its net. But she suffered, no doubt, in
her own way; she was red-eyed, and very hasty-handed with her nestful
of babes. Sitting in the cheerless parlour, Ned's dark-eyed eldest on
her knee, Mary strove to soothe and encourage. But: it has never been
much of a home for the poor boy was her private opinion; and she
pressed her cheek affectionately against the little black curly head
that was a replica of Ned's own.

"What's goin' to become of us all, the Lord only knows," said Polly,
after having had the good cry the sympathetic presence of her
sister-in-law justified. "I'm not a brown cent troubled about Ned--only
boiling with 'im. 'E's off on the booze, sure enough--and 'e'll turn up
again, safe and sound, like loose fish always do. Wait till I catch 'im
though! He'll get it hot."

"We never ought to have come here," she went on drying her eyes. "Drat
the place and all that's in it, that's what I say! He did better'n this
in Castlemaine; and I'd pa behind me there. But once Richard had sent
'im that twenty quid, he'd no rest till he got away. And I thought,
when he was so set on it, may be it'd have a good effect on 'im, to be
near you both. But that was just another shoot into the brown. You've
been A1, Mary; you've done your level best. But Richard's never treated
Ned fair. I don't want to take Ned's part; he's nothing in the world
but a pretty-faced noodle. But Richard's treated 'im as if he was the
dirt under 'is feet. And Ned's felt it. Oh, I know whose doing it was,
we were never asked up to the house when you'd company. It wasn't
YOURS, my dear! But we can't all have hyphens to our names, and go
driving round with kid gloves on our hands and our noses in the air."

Mary felt quite depressed by this f