ed off
her. I was very angry; but Eliza only repeated by way of consolation,
"She had no wits, only flesh, consequently she was better in my stew-pot
nor anywhere else, mum, if you'll only look at it calm like." But it
was very hard to be made to eat one's patient, especially when I was so
proud of the way her poor head had healed.

If anybody wanted to teaze me, they suggested that I had omitted to
replace my dear Kitty's brains before closing that cruel wound in her
skull.

Chapter XVI: Doctoring without a diploma.

So many reminiscences come crowding into my mind,--some grave and others
gay,--as I sit down to write these final chapters, that I hardly know
where to begin.

The most clamorous of the fast-thronging memories, the one which pushes
its way most vividly to the front, is of a little amateur doctoring of
mine; and as my patient luckily did not die of my remedies, I need not
fear that I shall be asked for my diploma.

Shearing was just over; over only that very evening in fact. We had been
leading a sort of uncomfortable picnic life at the home station for more
than ten days, and had returned to our own pretty little home up the
valley, late on Saturday night, in time for the supper-dinner I have so
often described. It was my doing, that fortnight's picnic at the home
station, and I may as well candidly confess it was a mistake; although,
made, like most mistakes in life, with good intentions. Our partner had
gone to England, our manager had just left us to set up sheep-farming
on his own account, and all the responsibility of shearing a good many
thousand sheep devolved on F----. And not only the shearing; the flock
had to be carefully draughted, the ewes, wethers, and hoggets, to be
branded, ear-marked, and turned out on their several ranges; the wethers
for home consumption, which consisted of a good-sized flock of many
hundred sheep, turned into the home-paddock,--an enclosure of some five
or six hundred acres,--and various other minute details to be seen to;
the wool to be sent down to Christchurch, and the stores brought up by
the return drays.

My motives for the plan I formed for us to go over, bag and baggage, to
the home station, the evening before the shearing began, and live there
till it was over, were varied. We will put the most unselfish first,
for the sake of appearances. I knew it would be very hard work for poor
F---- all that time, and I thought it would add to his fatigue if h