and run out the corners of my mouth; and Dave was near
as bad. At last I couldn't drink another teaspoonful without holding
back my head, and then I couldn't keep it down, but had to let it run
back into the blanky cup again. The girl began to clear away at the
other end of the table, and now and then she'd lay her hand on the
teapot and squint round to see if we wanted any more tea. But she never
spoke. She might have thought a lot--but she never opened her lips.

I tell you, without a word of a lie, that we must have drunk about a
dozen cups each. We made her fill the teapot twice, and kept her waitin'
nearly an hour, but we couldn't make her say a word. She never said a
single word to us from the time we came in till the time we went out,
nor before nor after. She'd made up her mind from the first not to speak
to us.

We had to get up and leave our cups half full at last. We went out and
sat down on our swags in the shade against the wall, and smoked and gave
that tea time to settle, and then we got on to the track again.

THE GEOLOGICAL SPIELER

There's nothing so interesting as Geology, even to common and
ignorant people, especially when you have a bank or the side of a
cutting, studded with fossil fish and things and oysters that were
stale when Adam was fresh to illustrate by. (Remark made by
Steelman, professional wanderer, to his pal and pupil, Smith.)

The first man that Steelman and Smith came up to on the last embankment,
where they struck the new railway line, was a heavy, gloomy, labouring
man with bowyangs on and straps round his wrists. Steelman bade him the
time of day and had a few words with him over the weather. The man of
mullock gave it as his opinion that the fine weather wouldn't last, and
seemed to take a gloomy kind of pleasure in that reflection; he said
there was more rain down yonder, pointing to the southeast, than the
moon could swallow up--the moon was in its first quarter, during which
time it is popularly believed in some parts of Maoriland that the
south-easter is most likely to be out on the wallaby and the weather
bad. Steelman regarded that quarter of the sky with an expression
of gentle remonstrance mingled as it were with a sort of fatherly
indulgence, agreed mildly with the labouring man, and seemed lost for a
moment in a reverie from which he roused himself to inquire cautiously
after the boss. There was no boss, it was a co-operative party. That
chap