ac."

"An' I doan't know what ye mean. _Phwat do ye mean_? I've asked ye that
before. What are ye dhrivin' at, man--out with it!"

"Well, I mean a little drop of the right stuff," he said, nettled. Then
he added: "No offence--no harm done."

"O-o-oh!" she said, illumination bursting in upon her brain. "It's the
dirrty drink ye're afther, is it? Well, I'll tell ye, first for last,
that we doan't keep a little drop of the right stuff nor a little drop
of the wrong stuff in this house. It's a honest house, an' me husband's
a honest harrd-worrkin' carrier, as he'd soon let ye know if he was at
home this cold night, poor man. No dirrty drink comes into this house,
nor goes out of it, I'd have ye know."

"Now, now, Mrs Mac, between friends, I meant no offence; but it's a cold
night, and I thought you might keep a bottle for medicine--or in case of
accident--or snake-bite, you know--they mostly do in the bush."

"Medicine! And phwat should we want with medicine? This isn't a
five-guinea private hospital. We're clean, healthy people, I'd have
ye know. There's a bottle of painkiller, if that's what ye want, and
a packet of salts left--maybe they'd do ye some good. An' a bottle of
eye-water, an' something to put in your ear for th' earache--maybe ye'll
want 'em both before ye go much farther."

"But, Mrs Mac--"

"No, no more of it!" she said. "I tell ye that if it's a nip ye're
afther, ye'll have to go on fourteen miles to the pub in the town. Ye're
coffee's gittin' cowld, an' it's eighteenpence each to passengers I
charge on a night like this; Harry Chatswood's the driver an' welcome,
an' Ould Jack's an ould friend." And she flounced round to clatter her
feelings amongst the crockery on the dresser--just as men make a great
show of filling and lighting their pipes in the middle of a barney. The
table, by the way, was set on a brown holland cloth, with the brightest
of tin plates for cold meals, and the brightest of tin pint-pots for
the coffee (the crockery was in reserve for hot meals and special local
occasions) and at one side of the wide fire-place hung an old-fashioned
fountain, while in the other stood a camp-oven; and billies and a black
kerosene-tin hung evermore over the fire from sooty chains. These, and
a big bucket-handled frying-pan and a few rusty convict-time arms on the
slab walls, were mostly to amuse jackaroos and jackarooesses, and let
them think they were getting into the Australian-dontcherknow at las