Page:Where the Dead Men Lie.djvu/90

 Then old Mother Brown got the horrors around her: (I think it was pineapple rum drove her daft) She cleared out one night, and next morning they found her, A mummified mass, in a forty-foot shaft.

And Sammy? Well, Sammy was wailing and weeping, And raving, and raising the devil’s own row: He was only too glad to give into our keeping His motherless babe—we’d have kept her till now;

But Jimmy Maloney thought proper to court her: Among all the lasses he loved but this one: She’s no longer Polly, our golden-haired daughter; She’s Mrs. Maloney, of Packsaddle Run.

Our little girl Polly’s no end of a swell (you Must know Jimmy shears fifty thousand odd sheep)— But I’m clean off the track: I was going to tell you The way in which Polly paid us for her keep.

It was this way: My wife’s living in Tumbarumba, And I’m down at Germanton yards, for a sale, Inspecting coach-horses (I wanted a number) When they flashed down a message that made me turn pale.

’Twas from Polly, to say that the old wife had fallen Down-stairs, and in falling had fractured a bone: There was no doctor nearer than Tumut to call on, So she and the blacksmith had set it alone.