Page:An Australian Parsonage.djvu/168

. A fire was burning here, betokening the presence of an invalid on this particular evyening, and as Rosa and I leaned over the bridge watching the flicker of the firelight in the dry river bed, a man standing near the wooden piers, who had recognized me, looked up, and told me that a native woman lay very ill in a hut below.

On hearing this Rosa and I turned off the bridge, and went down the bank to see if we could offer her any help. We found, to our regret, that the sick woman was one with whom we were well acquainted, and her evidently hopeless state somewhat surprised us, as poor "Kitty" had called at our house in good health not very long before. Her intelligence was above the average, and a stranger from England, whose impressions of Australian natives had been solely derived from books, would have probably supposed, on seeing her neatly dressed and waiting at table, that she was a West Indian mulatto, excepting for the softness of her hair. I had been so much struck with her appearance on one such occasion as afterwards to feel surprised on receiving a visit from her attired in nothing but the native costume of a long fur mantle over one shoulder and under the other; but I found that, just in the same way as European ladies put on their travelling dresses, natives assume the kangaroo skin when about to make a journey.

I came up to the hut where she was now lying on the ground, and the sight of me appeared to gratify the poor creature, for it was plain that she had something to say to me, and that she might the better do so her husband raised her and supported her in a sitting posture, when with much difficulty she pronounced the words, "Will you take