Page:On Our Selection.djvu/32

18 One morning when Dan was digging potatoes for dinner—splendid potatoes they were, too, Dad said; he had only once tasted sweeter ones, but they were grown in a cemetery—he found the kangaroos had been in the barley. We knew what that meant, and that night made fires round it, thinking to frighten them off, but did n't—mobs of them were in at daybreak. Dad swore from the house at them, but they took no notice; and when he ran down, they just hopped over the fence and sat looking at him. Poor Dad! I don't know if he was knocked up or if he did n't know any more, but he stopped swearing and sat on a stump looking at a patch of barley they had destroyed, and shaking his head. Perhaps he was thinking if he only had a dog! We did have one until he got a bait. Old Crib! He was lying under the table at suppertime when he took the first fit, and what a fright we got! He must have reared before stiffening out, because he capsized the table into Mother's lap, and everything on it smashed except the tin-plates and the pints. The lamp fell on Dad, too, and the melted fat scalded his arm. Dad dragged Crib out and cut off his tail and ears, but he might as well have taken off his head.

Dad stood with his back to the fire while Mother was putting a stitch in his trousers. "There 's nothing for it but to watch them at night," he was saying, when old Anderson appeared and asked "if I could have those few pounds." Dad asked Mother if she had any money in the house? Of