Fried sheep eaten with the fingers is
rather messy at times."

They arranged for Mrs. King to collect and forward their letters from
home as soon as they gave her an address; Marcella did not mention the
chief reason for getting away from Sydney now. She had an instinctive
feeling that Mrs. King would think she was raving mad to run away into
the Bush with an unborn child.

"I hope you'll be happy, kid," she said, as they talked over plans. "But
I doubt it, with him. You want more than I do--"

"I want everything," said Marcella, decidedly.

"I don't care so long's my back isn't too bad, and he scrubs down for
me, and I can pay my way. I've got this house paying proper now, and the
young chaps treat me as if I was their mother."

Marcella felt it was well that she was getting away from this atmosphere
of dull acceptance of misery, of the worst in life. Anyway, she told
herself, she would make a quick end to things with fire or knife before
she got like that. Expediently keeping a drunken man quiet; expediently
kissing him and fondling him for fear he would get drunk again to-morrow
in spite or pique: content with a man who would scrub floors for a
"livener"! It was better, far, to be homeless wanderers in the Bush
where there was no need to be expedient for the sake of others, where
they would have to stand up on their own intrinsic strength or fall;
where they need not be respectable and where she could, if he were weak,
alternately shake him up and soothe him without spectators. She would
never, never, never allow herself to get into this cringing habit of
being thankful for the small mercies of life when the big justices of
life were there, so very big and shining.

"Of course," went on Mrs. King in a flat voice, "I've always one mercy I
thank God for on my bended knees every night. That is, not having any
drunkard's children to bring up and be a curse to me when their father's
left off breaking my heart."

"Oh--no, no!" cried Marcella, staring at her with horror.

"Yes, kid, just you keep that in mind! You ta' care, my dear. It's on'y
natural, if you have kids, they'll take after their father. And I'd
sooner see them laying dead before me than bring up drunkards to be a
curse to some other poor devil. They'll not escape it. It's in their
blood."

Marcella burst in passionately:

"Why, Mrs. King, that's the rottenest, wickedest heresy that was ever
invented to tell anyone! If you believe a cruel thing lik