No undergrowth. Nothing to relieve the eye save the darker green of a few she-oaks which are sighing above the narrow, almost waterless creek. Nineteen miles to the nearest sign of civilization—a shanty on the main road.
As a girl she built the usual castles in the air; but all her girlish hopes and aspirations have been long dead. She finds all the excitement and recreation she needs in the Young Ladies’ Journal, and Heaven help her! Takes a pleasure in the fashion plates.
He hates snakes and has killed many, but he will be bitten someday and die; most snake-dogs end that way.
The sight of his mother in trousers greatly amused Tommy, who worked like a little hero by her side, but the terrified baby howled lustily for his ‘mummy.’
She stood for hours in the drenching downpour, and dug an overflow gutter to save the dam across the creek. But she could not save it. There are things that a bushwoman cannot do.
The crows leave in a hurry; they are cunning, but a woman’s cunning is greater.
On Sunday afternoon she dresses herself, tidies up the children, smartens up baby, and goes for a lonely walk along the bush-track, pushing an old perambulator in front of her.
She loves her children, but has no time to show it. She seems harsh to them. Her surroundings are not favorable to the “womanly” or sentimental side of nature.
He was the last of his tribe and a King; but he had built that woodheap hollow.
Presently he looks up at her, sees the tears in her eyes, and, throwing his arms around her neck exclaims:
“Mother, I won’t never go drovin’; blarst me if I do!”
