Page:Over the Sliprails - 1900.djvu/147

 unstrapped the parcels and carried them in; as she passed her brother, she said:

“Take the saddle off for me, will you, Jack?”

“Oh, carnt yer take it off yerself?” he snarled; “carnt yer see I’m busy?”

She took off the saddle and bridle, and carried them into a shed, where she hung them on a beam. The patient old hack shook himself with an energy that seemed ill-advised, considering his age and condition, and went off towards the “dam”.

An old woman sat in the main room beside a fireplace which took up almost the entire end of the house. A plank-table, supported on stakes driven into the ground, stood in the middle of the room, and two slab benches were fixtures on each side. The floor was clay. All was clean and poverty-stricken; all that could be whitewashed was white, and everything that could be washed was scrubbed. The slab shelves were covered with clean newspapers, on which bright tins, and pannikins, and fragments of crockery were set to the greatest advantage. The walls, however, were disfigured by Christmas supplements of illustrated journals.

The girl came in and sat down wearily on a stool opposite to the old woman.

“Are you any better, mother?” she asked.

“Very little, Mary, very little. Have you seen your father?”

“No.”

“I wonder where he is?”

“You might wonder. What’s the use of worrying about it, mother?”