with
tearful affection by his favourite sister Mary, shakes hands silently
with his father, and has a long whispered conversation with his mother,
which leaves him very subdued. His brothers forbear to sneer at him,
partly because it is Christmas, partly on mother's account, and thirdly,
because Jim can use his hands. Aunt Emma, who is fond of him, cheers him
up wonderfully.

The family sit down to dinner. "An old mate of your father's"--a bearded
old digger--has arrived and takes the place of honour. ("I knowed yer
father, sonny, on the diggings long afore any of you was ever thought
on.")

The family have only been a few hours together, yet there is an
undercurrent of growling, that, to the stranger, mysterious yet evident
undercurrent of nastiness and resentment which goes on in all families
and drags many a promising young life down. But Aunt Emma and the old
mate make things brighter, and so the dinner--of hot roast and red-hot
plum pudding--passes off fairly well.

The men sleep the afternoon away and wake up bathed in perspiration and
helpless; some of the women have headaches. After tea they gather on the
veranda in the cool of the evening, and that's the time when the best
sides of their natures and the best parts of the past have a chance of
coming uppermost, and perhaps they begin to feel a bit sorry that they
are going to part again.

The local races or "sports" on Boxing Day. There is nothing to keep the
boys home over New Year. Ted and his wife go back to their lonely life
on their selection; Tom returns to his fencing or tank-sinking contract;
Jim, who has borrowed "a couple of quid" from Tom, goes out back with
strong resolutions for the New Year, and shears "stragglers," breaks in
horses, cooks and clerks for survey parties, and gambles and drinks, and
gets into trouble again. Maybe Joe "knocks about" the farm a bit before
going into the Great North-West with another mob of cattle.

The last time I saw the Old Year out at Eurunderee the bushfires were
burning all over the ranges, and looked like great cities lighted up. No
need for bonfires then. Christmas in Bourke, the metropolis of the
great pastoral scrubs and plains, five hundred miles west, with the
thermometer one-hundred-and-something-scarey in the shade. The rough,
careless shearers come in from stations many dusty miles out in
the scrubs to have their Christmas sprees, to drink and "shout" and
fight--and have the horrors some of them--a