prance about the floor with them till all hours.

Nearly every week Mother gave a ball. It might have been every night
only for Dad. He said the jumping about destroyed the
ground-floor--wore it away and made the room like a well. And whenever
it rained hard and the water rushed in he had to bail it out. Dad
always looked on the dark side of things. He had no ear for music
either. His want of appreciation of melody often made the home
miserable when it might have been the merriest on earth. Sometimes it
happened that he had to throw down the plough-reins for half-an-hour or
so to run round the wheat-paddock after a horse or an old cow; then, if
he found Dave, or Sal, or any of us, sitting inside playing the
concertina when he came to get a drink, he would nearly go mad.

"Can't y' find anything better t' do than everlastingly playing at that
damn thing?" he would shout. And if we did n't put the instrument down
immediately he would tear it from our hands and pitch it outside. If
we DID lay it down quietly he would snatch it up and heave it out just
as hard. The next evening he would devote all his time to patching the
fragments together with sealing-wax.

Still, despite Dad's antagonism, we all turned out good players. It
cost us nothing either. We learnt from each other. Kate was the first
that learnt. SHE taught Sal. Sal taught Dave, and so on. Sandy
Taylor was Kate's tutor. He passed our place every evening going to
his selection, where he used to sleep at night (fulfilling conditions),
and always stopped at the fence to yarn with Kate about dancing. Sandy
was a fine dancer himself, very light on his feet and easy to waltz
with--so the girls made out. When the dancing subject was exhausted
Sandy would drag some hair out of his horse's mane and say, "How's the
concertina?" "It's in there," Kate would answer. Then turning round
she would call out, "J--OE, bring the concer'."

In an instant Joe would strut along with it. And Sandy, for the
fiftieth time, would examine it and laugh at the kangaroo-skin straps
that Dave had tacked to it, and the scraps of brown paper that were
plastered over the ribs of it to keep the wind in; and, cocking his
left leg over the pommel of his saddle, he would sound a full blast on
it as a preliminary. Then he would strike up "The Rocky Road to
Dublin", or "The Wind Among the Barley,", or some other beautiful air,
and grind away untiringly until it got dark--until