eep the milkers alive till the rain comes.'

They said that when the pleuro-pneumonia was in the district and amongst
her cattle she bled and physicked them herself, and fed those that were
down with slices of half-ripe pumpkins (from a crop that had failed).

'An', one day,' she told Mary, 'there was a big barren heifer (that we
called Queen Elizabeth) that was down with the ploorer. She'd been down
for four days and hadn't moved, when one mornin' I dumped some wheaten
chaff--we had a few bags that Spicer brought home--I dumped it in front
of her nose, an'--would yer b'lieve me, Mrs Wilson?--she stumbled onter
her feet an' chased me all the way to the house! I had to pick up me
skirts an' run! Wasn't it redic'lus?'

They had a sense of the ridiculous, most of those poor sun-dried
Bushwomen. I fancy that that helped save them from madness.

'We lost nearly all our milkers,' she told Mary. 'I remember one day
Tommy came running to the house and screamed: 'Marther! [mother] there's
another milker down with the ploorer!' Jist as if it was great news.
Well, Mrs Wilson, I was dead-beat, an' I giv' in. I jist sat down
to have a good cry, and felt for my han'kerchief--it WAS a rag of a
han'kerchief, full of holes (all me others was in the wash). Without
seein' what I was doin' I put me finger through one hole in the
han'kerchief an' me thumb through the other, and poked me fingers into
me eyes, instead of wipin' them. Then I had to laugh.'

There's a story that once, when the Bush, or rather grass, fires were
out all along the creek on Spicer's side, Wall's station hands were up
above our place, trying to keep the fire back from the boundary, and
towards evening one of the men happened to think of the Spicers: they
saw smoke down that way. Spicer was away from home, and they had a small
crop of wheat, nearly ripe, on the selection.

'My God! that poor devil of a woman will be burnt out, if she ain't
already!' shouted young Billy Wall. 'Come along, three or four of you
chaps'--(it was shearing-time, and there were plenty of men on the
station).

They raced down the creek to Spicer's, and were just in time to save the
wheat. She had her sleeves tucked up, and was beating out the burning
grass with a bough. She'd been at it for an hour, and was as black as a
gin, they said. She only said when they'd turned the fire: 'Thenk yer!
Wait an' I'll make some tea.'

*****

After tea the first Sunday she came to see us, Mar