t, slab house in its
sheltered nook amid the Timlinbilly Ranges was ever full to overflowing.
Doctors, lawyers, squatters, commercial travellers, bankers, journalists,
tourists, and men of all kinds and classes crowded our well-spread board;
but seldom a female face, except mother's, was to be seen there,
Bruggabrong being a very out-of-the-way place.

I was both the terror and the amusement of the station. Old
boundary-riders and drovers inquire after me with interest to this day.

I knew everyone's business, and was ever in danger of publishing it at an
inopportune moment.

In flowery language, selected from slang used by the station hands, and
long words picked up from our visitors, I propounded unanswerable
questions which brought blushes to the cheeks of even tough old
wine-bibbers.

Nothing would induce me to show more respect to an appraiser of the runs
than to a boundary-rider, or to a clergyman than a drover. I am the same
to this day. My organ of veneration must be flatter than a pancake,
because to venerate a person simply for his position I never did or will.
To me the Prince of Wales will be no more than a shearer, unless when I
meet him he displays some personality apart from his princeship--otherwise
he can go hang.

Authentic record of the date when first I had a horse to myself has not
been kept, but it must have been early, as at eight I was fit to ride
anything on the place. Side-saddle, man-saddle, no-saddle, or astride were
all the same to me. I rode among the musterers as gamely as any of the
big sunburnt bushmen.

My mother remonstrated, opined I would be a great unwomanly tomboy. My
father poohed the idea.

"Let her alone, Lucy," he said, "let her alone. The rubbishing
conventionalities which are the curse of her sex will bother her soon
enough. Let her alone!"

So, smiling and saying, "She should have been a boy," my mother let me
alone, and I rode, and in comparison to my size made as much noise with
my stock-whip as any one. Accidents had no power over me, I came
unscathed out of droves of them.

Fear I knew not. Did a drunken tramp happen to kick up a row, I was
always the first to confront him, and, from my majestic and roly-poly
height of two feet six inches, demand what he wanted.

A digging started near us and was worked by a score of two dark-browed
sons of Italy. They made mother nervous, and she averred they were not to
be trusted, but I liked and trusted them. They carrie