Page:An Australian Parsonage.djvu/327

298 and the master returning quite baffled, describes himself as much cheered by the perfume of a sandalwood fire announcing from a distance that the tea is in progress, which he not only finds to be the case on nearer approach, but that his servitor is already rolling out a damper.

"Bravo, good fellow; where did you find the water?" but Billiagoro says never a word, and continues to bake his cake in silence. Just before lying down to sleep, Father Salvado reminds him that he had better go back to the well and bring water enough for breakfast, so as to save time in the morning. "The well!" said Billiagoro, now ready enough to speak; "there is not a drop left in it." "No water left in it?" replied Father Salvado; "what can you mean?" "Not a single drop," said Billiagoro; "all I could find was in a "hole in a stone, and I had to suck up what there was of it by a mouthful at a time to fill the pannikin." "My good fellow!" expostulated the master; "why not tell me so before?" "Where would have been the good of my doing that?" was the servant's answer; "you would have drunk nothing then; now you have had your tea, and eaten the damper."

In the same manner as Dogberry follows his "sixth and lastly," with "to conclude," I add another story of a different kind, referring to an experience of too much water rather than the want of it. A poor little native orphan of six years old having taken refuge in a half-starved ondition at the monastery, the monks decided on handing her over to the care of the nuns at Perth, and with this view Father Salvado set out to convey her thither in the ox wagon. The winter of 1847 being