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“Well, Mrs Mae,” he said, getting up from the table and slipping his hand into his pocket. “I don’t know what’s come over yer to-night, but, anyway–” Here he put the money down on the table. “There’s the money I owe yer for–for—“

“For what?” she demanded, turning on him with surprising swiftness for such a stout woman.

“The–the fourteen bob I owed for them drinks when Bill Hogan and me—“

“You don’t owe me no fourteen bob for dhrinks, you dirty blaggard! Are ye mad? You got no drink off of me. Phwat d’ye mean?”

“Beg–beg pardin, Mrs Mac,” stammered Old Jack, very much taken aback; “but the–yer know–the fourteen bob, anyway, I owed you when–that night when me an’ Bill Hogan an’ yer sister-in-law, Mary Don—“

“What? Well, I–Git out of me house, ye low blaggard! I’m a honest, respictable married woman, and so is me sister-in-law, Mary Donelly; and to think!–Git out of me door!” and she caught up the billy of coffee. “Git outside me door, or I’ll let ye have it in ye’r ugly face, ye low woolscourer–an’ it’s nearly bilin’.”

Old Jack stumbled dazedly out, and blind instinct got him on to the coach as the safest place. Harry Chatswood had stood with his long, gaunt figure hung by an elbow to the high mantelshelf, all the time, taking alternate gulps from his pint of coffee and puffs from his pipe, and very calmly and restfully regarding the scene.

“An’ now,” she said, “if the gentleman’s done, I’d thank him to pay–it’s eighteenpence–an’ git his overcoat on. I’ve had enough dirty insults this night to last me a lifetime. To think of it–the blaggard!” she said to the table, “an’ me a woman alone in a place like this on a night like this!”

The traveller calmly put down a two-shilling piece, as if the whole affair was the most ordinary thing in the world (for he was used to many bush things) and comfortably got into his overcoat.

“Well, Mrs Mae, I never thought Old Jack was mad before,” said Harry Chatswood. “And I hinted to him,” he added in a whisper. “Anyway” (out loudly), “you’ll lend me a light, Mrs Mac, to have a look at that there swingle-bar of mine?”

“With pleasure, Harry,” she said, “for you’re a white man, anyway. I’ll bring ye a light. An’ all the lights in heaven if I could, an’–an’ in the other place if they’d help ye.”

When he’d looked to the swingle-bar, and had mounted to his place and untwisted the reins from a side-bar, she cried:

“An’ as for them two, Harry, shpill them in the first creek you come to, an’ God be good to you! It’s all they’re fit for, the low blaggards, to insult an honest woman alone in the bush in a place like this.”

“All right, Mrs Mac,” said Harry, cheerfully. “Good night, Mrs Mac.”

“Good night, Harry, an’ God go with ye, for the creeks are risen after last night’s storm.” And Harry drove on and left her to think over it.

She thought over it in a way that would have been unexpected to Harry, and would have made him uneasy, for he was really good-natured. She sat down on a stool by the fire, and presently, after thinking over it a bit, two big, lonely tears rolled down the lonely woman’s fair, fat, blonde cheeks in the firelight.

“An’ to think of Old Jack,” she said. “The very last man in the world I’d dreamed of turning on me. But–but I always thought Old Jack was goin’ a bit ratty, an’ maybe I was a bit hard on him. God forgive us all!”

Had Harry Chatswood seen her then he would have been sorry he did it. Swagmen and broken-hearted new chums had met worse women than Mother Mac.

But she pulled herself together, got up and bustled round. She put on more wood, swept the hearth, put a parcel of fresh steak and sausages–brought by the coach–on to a clean plate on the table, and got some potatoes into a dish; for Chatswood had told her that her first and longest and favourite stepson was not far behind him with the bullock team. Before she had finished the potatoes she heard the clock-clock of heavy wheels and the crack of the bullock whip coming along the dark bush track.