morrow, the first time we were alone, Horace seized the
opportunity of holding forth on _his_ woes. It was no use, he was choke
full of Possum Gully: he would stick to it for another year, and then he
would chuck it, even if he had to go on the wallaby. He wasn't going to
be slaving for ever for the boss to swallow the proceeds, and there was
nothing to be made out of dairying. When it wasn't drought it was floods
and caterpillars and grasshoppers.

Among my brothers and sisters I quickly revived to a certain extent, and
mother asserted her opinion that I had not been ill at all, but had made
up my mind to torment her; had not taken sufficient exercise, and might
have had a little derangement of the system but nothing more. It was
proposed that I should return to Barney's Gap. I demurred, and was
anathematized as ungrateful and altogether corrupt, that I would not go
back to M'Swat, who was so good as to lend my father money out of pure
friendship; but for once in my life I could not be made submit by either
coercion or persuasion. Grannie offered to take one of us to Caddagat;
mother preferred that Gertie should go. So we sent the pretty girl to
dwell among her kindred in a land of comfort and pleasure.

I remained at Possum Gully to tread the same old life in its tame narrow
path, with its never-ending dawn-till-daylight round of tasks; with, as
its entertainments, an occasional picnic or funeral or a day in town,
when, should it happen to be Sunday, I never fail to patronize one of the
cathedrals. I love the organ music, and the hush which pervades the
building; and there is much entertainment in various ways if one goes
early and watches the well-dressed congregation filing in. The costumes
and the women are pretty, and, in his own particular line, the ability of
the verger is something at which to marvel. Regular attendants, of
course, pay for and have reserved their seats, but it is in classing the
visitors that the verger displays his talent. He can cull the commoners
from the parvenu aristocrats, and put them in their respective places as
skilfully as an expert horse-dealer can draft his stock at a sale. Then,
when the audience is complete, in the middle and front of the edifice are
to be found they of the white hands and fine jewels; and in the topmost
seat of the synagogue, praying audibly, is one who has made all his
wealth by devouring widows' houses; while pushed away to the corners and
wings are they