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For a few minutes the adults listened and watched intently, but the gentle voice of the parson, and his nervous manner, soon convinced them that they had nothing to fear from him. Ned had been "pokin' borak" at them again; they added it to the long score they owed him.

The children wandered about the room. Jinny and Sis invited their little sister to "Cum an' see ther pooty picters in the man's book," and they assisted the minister to turn over the leaves of his Bible.

Alick's father, who was from the North of Ireland, and, for all his forty years in the bush, had not lost his reverence for the cloth, bade his grand-daughters beseechingly to "quet", whereupon Jinny showed him quite two inches of inky tongue. Ink was a commodity unknown in Jinny's home and all the unknown is edible to the bush child.

"Woman!" he said, appealing to Jinny's mother, "whybut you bid 'er to quet?"

"You orter be in er glars' ban' box w'er ther ain't no children; thet's w'er you orter be," answered Jyne.

He beckoned to one straggler, a girl of six,