r the stars
and the loom of the hills were hidden by smoke and drought haze.

There was a dance at Careys'. Old Carey was a cheerful, broad-minded
bushman, haunted at times by the memories of old days, when he was the
beau of the bush balls, and so when he built his new slab-and-bark barn
he had it properly floored with hard-wood, and the floor well-faced "to
give the young people a show when they wanted a dance," he said. The
floor had a spring in it, and bush boys and girls often rode twenty
miles and more to dance on that floor. The girls said it was a lovely
floor.

On this occasion Carey had stacked his wheat outside until after the New
Year. Spring-carts, and men and girls on horseback came in from miles
round. "Sperm" candles had been cut up and thrown on the floor during
the afternoon, and rubbed over by feet cased tightly in 'lastic-sides;
and hoops were hung horizontally from the tie-beams, with candles stuck
round them. There were fresh-faced girls, and sweet, freckled-faced
girls, and jolly girls, and shy girls--all sorts of girls except
sulky, "toney" girls--and lanky chaps, most of them sawney, and
weird, whiskered agriculturists, who watched the dancers with old, old
time-worn smiles, or stood, or sat on their heels yarning, with their
pipes, outside, where two boilers were slung over a log-fire to boil
water for tea; and there were leathery women, with complexions like
dried apples, who gossiped--for the first time in months perhaps--and
watched the young people, and thought at times, no doubt, of other
days--of other days when they were girls. (And not so far distant
either, in some cases, for women dry quickly in the bush.)

And there were one or two old soldiers and their wives, whose eyes
glistened when Jim Bullock played "The Girl I Left Behind Me."

Jim Bullock was there with his concertina. He sat on a stool in front of
a bench, on which was a beer-keg, piles of teacups and saucers, several
big tin teapots, and plates of sandwiches, sponge-cakes, and tarts.
Jim sat in his shirt-sleeves, with his flat-brimmed, wire-bound,
"hard-hitter" hat on, slanting over his weaker eye. He held one leg
loosely and the other rigid, with the concertina on his knee, and
swanked away at the instrument by the hour, staring straight in front of
him with the expression of a cod-fish, and never moving a muscle except
the muscles of his great hairy arms and big chapped and sun-blotched
hands; while chaps in tight