of
one of our small carts, was undoubtedly half-witted. We had several
big fellows whose chins cried aloud for the application of razors. And
none of us was idle. Even little five-year-olds, like Teddy Reeves,
gathered and carried kindling wood, and weeded the garden; while boys
of my own age were old and experienced farm hands, and had adopted the
heavy, lurching stride of the farm labourer.

I suppose there never was a 'charitable' institution conducted more
emphatically upon business lines than was St. Peter's Orphanage. The
establishment included a dairy farm, a poultry farm, and a market
garden. Indeed, at that period, so far as the production of vegetables
went, we had no white competitors within fifty or a hundred miles, I
think. As in many other parts of Australia, the inhabitants of this
countryside regarded any form of market gardening as Chinaman's work,
pure and simple. There were any number of settlers then who never
tasted vegetables from one year's end to another, though the ground
about their houses would have grown every green thing known to
culinary art. In the townships, too, nobody would 'be bothered'
growing vegetables; but, unlike many of the 'cockatoo' farmers, the
town people were ready enough to buy green things; and therein lay our
opportunity. We rarely ate vegetables at St. Peter's, but we
cultivated them assiduously; and sixpence and eightpence were quite
ordinary prices for our cabbages to fetch.

So, too, with dairy products. We 'inmates' saw very little of butter
at table, treacle being our great standby. (The sisters had butter, of
course.) But St. Peter's butter stamped 'S.P.O.' was famous in the
district, and esteemed, as it was priced, highly. Exactly the same
might be said (both as regards our share of these commodities and the
public appreciation of them) of the eggs and milk produced at St.
Peter's. Save in the way of occasional pilferings I never tasted milk
at St. Peter's; but between us, the members of the milking gang, of
which I was at one time chief, milked twenty-nine cows, morning and
evening. I have heard Jim Meagher, the chief poultry boy, boast of a
single day's gathering of four hundred and sixty-eight eggs; but eggs,
save when stolen, pricked, and sucked raw, never figured in our bill
of fare. At first glance this might appear unbusinesslike, but the
prices obtainable for these things were good, as they still are and
always have been in Australia; and the various it