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 now. We’ve fifty cows in milk, butter keeps up, and there’s talk of building a factory four miles off. And then, if this man that’s after the place now, you know, does take it, we’ll be able to sell out well, and Dad can leave that hateful store.

“Neighbours? No, of course, we haven’t many—nor much time, either, to go and see those that we have; but then, we’re a host in ourselves, aren’t we? and we can all sing, and most of us can play. That’s one thing, though—I do want Eva to get away to town, and have some lessons; you ought to hear her; she has got a proper voice! And she’s the only one of us all that doesn’t like this life, and she tries to boss Bruv and Sandy sometimes, and naturally that doesn’t do. Sundays? Oh, well, of course there isn’t any church, and if there was, I doubt if we’d ever get, for we’re mostly pretty tired, you see, by Sunday. So we just ‘doss’ a bit, read a bit, eat a meal when one happens along, doss again, read again, and wind up with some music in the evening. You’ve got to milk on Sundays, of course, just the same as weekdays.”

I wondered what the reading was, and asked.

“Oh, just the papers—and a fool of a yarn sometimes. We’ve none of us got any brains to spare,” says Nance frankly. “I can’t stand reading dry stuff, anyway; can you? There! that’s the last bottle; thanks! Now shall we go and pick up windfalls in the orchard? I want to make some apple-pies for tea.”

There was a certain foreigner who came to New Zealand not so very long ago—a Russian, if I re-