I was piqued by this accusation of lack in understanding. I said I could understand it was easier for Pa because he was so proud of her and thought her so wonderful. He at least had the satisfaction of thinking what a stroke he had done to choose and win such a wife, while she must always be ashamed of herself for marrying so much beneath her; but that did not appease Ma. Quite the opposite. Quite, quite the opposite! I gathered that Ma had the added affliction of me as a daughter, which couldn’t matter so much to Pa because I took after him.

Then Mr. Blackshaw’s back was smitten and he could not rise from bed. All the men at one time or another had a bad back. It was Mr. Blackshaw’s turn. Ma was a deserted heroine.

“It is my turn to save the ship,” said I. “You always say that I’ll have to help Pa. I know how to pick up and roll a fleece, and Eusty can be tar boy and rouse-about.”

This did not dispose of the pressing. We had a handworked press of Pa’s construction which Ma said showed what a helpless botcher Pa was, but all the neighbours used to borrow it, which further shows the standard of the neighbourhood, or that Pa wasn’t so bad.

We turned the hayshed into a floor for two men with blades, who wanted to learn so that they could go down the Riverina next year. The skilled shearers had not yet returned to their little homes in the wallaby scrubs around us. These lads had to do their own work and come a distance each morning and they were very slow. All this prolonged the festival.

Ma vetoed the idea of my working in the shed. It would have been fun and a relief from the pot lids and d’oyleys. (It sometimes took half an hour to iron one of the prevalent d’oyleys.)

“You would be talked about,” said Ma, “and the boys would be giggle-gaggling with you instead of attending to their work.”

She decided to attend to the shearing herself and let me do the cooking. This was a disappointment, as to press one’s face into a nice fat sheep all white from the shears is a delight. The two shearers were selectors’ sons in their teens. We knew each other minutely, but did not “associate”. We were a grade higher socially, but had we shown it they would not have shorn for us, and would have slanged us throughout the neighbourhood. Ma and I managed to be too busy to sit down to meals with them, and thus was a gradation of the caste system preserved.

The shearing was saved but the country was lost in so far as Pa’s man was rejected by the electors, and Pa did not have his election expenses paid.

CHAPTER SIX.

THE BREAD OF THE MAIL BOX RETURNS.

The mail was left three times a week in a battered kerosene can nailed on the fence of the main road two miles away—that is if the mailman was not too drunk to sort it. He liked to keep any special letter a day or two till he read it and then gummed it up again. Other times he was content with tearing a corner off so that he could look in. He enlivened monotony by a lively interest in his neighbours’ doings.