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We both laughed when I told her about it afterwards; but I didn’t feel like laughing just then.

Later on in the night she called out in her sleep,–

‘Joe–Joe! Put that buggy in the shed, or the sun will blister the varnish!’

I wish I could say that that was the last time I ever spoke unkindly to Mary.

Next morning I got up early and fried the bacon and made the tea, and took Mary’s breakfast in to her–like I used to do, sometimes, when we were first married. She didn’t say anything–just pulled my head down and kissed me.

When I was ready to start Mary said,–

‘You’d better take the spring-cart in behind the dray and get the tyres cut and set. They’re ready to drop off, and James has been wedging them up till he’s tired of it. The last time I was out with the children I had to knock one of them back with a stone: there’ll be an accident yet.’

So I lashed the shafts of the cart under the tail of the waggon, and mean and ridiculous enough the cart looked, going along that way. It suggested a man stooping along handcuffed, with his arms held out and down in front of him.

It was dull weather, and the scrubs looked extra dreary and endless–and I got thinking of old things. Everything was going all right with me, but that didn’t keep me from brooding sometimes–trying to hatch out stones, like an old hen we had at home. I think, taking it all round, I used to be happier when I was mostly hard-up–and more generous. When I had ten pounds I was more likely to listen to a chap who said, ‘Lend me a pound-note, Joe,’ than when I had fifty; THEN I fought shy of careless chaps–and lost mates that I wanted afterwards–and got the name of being mean. When I got a good cheque I’d be as miserable as a miser over the first ten pounds I spent; but when I got down to the last I’d buy things for the house. And now that I was getting on, I hated to spend a pound on anything. But then, the farther I got away from poverty the greater the fear I had of it–and, besides, there was always before us all the thought of the terrible drought, with blazing runs as bare and dusty as the road, and dead stock rotting every yard, all along the barren creeks.

I had a long yarn with Mary’s sister and her husband that night in Gulgong, and it brightened me up. I had a fancy that that sort of a brother-in-law made a better mate than a nearer one; Tom Tarrant had one, and he said it was sympathy. But while we were yarning I couldn’t help thinking of Mary, out there in the hut on the Creek, with no one to talk to but the children, or James, who was sulky at home, or Black Mary or Black Jimmy (our black boy’s father and mother), who weren’t oversentimental. Or maybe a selector’s wife (the nearest was five miles away), who could talk only of two or three things–‘lambin” and ‘shearin” and ‘cookin’ for the men’, and what she said to her old man, and what he said to her–and her own ailments–over and over again.

It’s a wonder it didn’t drive Mary mad!–I know I could never listen to that woman more than an hour. Mary’s sister said,–

‘Now if Mary had a comfortable buggy, she could drive in with the children oftener. Then she wouldn’t feel the loneliness so much.’

I said ‘Good night’ then and turned in. There was no getting away from that buggy. Whenever Mary’s sister started hinting about a buggy, I reckoned it was a put-up job between them.

III. The Ghost of Mary’s Sacrifice.

When I got to Gudgeegong I stopped at Galletly’s coach-shop to leave the cart. The Galletlys were good fellows: there were two brothers–one was a saddler and harness-maker. Big brown-bearded men–the biggest men in the district, ’twas said.