eing were particularly tinged with pessimism.
If the vague something called "law and order" was determined to be broken
so that the bush could be dragooned for the squatter it seemed to her as
well to make a substantial breakage while men were about it--and she
did not believe they would.

She placed a cool damp cloth on the baby's head, wishing that its mother
would come up, Mrs. Hobbs having been persuaded to go downstairs for some
tea and a rest while Nellie watched by the sick child and having been
entangled in household affairs the moment she appeared in the dingy
kitchen where Mrs. Macanany, to the neglect of her own home, was "seeing
to things." The hard breathing was becoming easier. Nellie brought the
candle burning in a broken cup. The flushed face was growing paler and
more natural. The twitching muscles were stilling. There was a change.

One unused to seeing Death approach would have thought the baby settling
down at last to a refreshing, health-reviving sleep. Nellie had lived for
years where the children die like rabbits, and knew.

"Mrs. Hobbs!" she called, softly but urgently, running to the stairs.

The poor woman came hastily to the foot. "Quick, Mrs. Hobbs!" said
Nellie, beckoning.

"Oh, Mrs. Macanany! The baby's dying!" cried poor Mrs. Hobbs, tripping on
her dragging skirts in her frantic haste to get upstairs. Mrs. Macanany
followed. The children set up a boohoo that brought Mr. Hobbs from the
front doorstep where he had been sitting smoking. He rushed up the stairs
also. When he reached the top he saw, by the light of the candle in
Nellie's hand, a little form lying still and white; its mother crouched
on the floor, wailing over it.

It was a small room, almost bare, the bedstead of blistered iron, the
mattress thin, the bedding tattered and worn. A soapbox was the chair on
which Nellie had been sitting; there was no other. Against the wall,
above a rough shelf, was a piece of mirror-glass without a frame. The
window in the sloping roof was uncurtained. On the poor bed, under the
tattered sheet, was the dead baby. And on the floor, writhing, was its
mother, Mrs. Macanany trying to comfort her between the pauses of her own
vehement neighbourly grief.

Nellie closed the dead baby's eyes, set the candle on the shelf and moved
to the door where Mr. Hobbs stood bewildered and dumbfoundered, his pipe
still in his hand. "Speak to her!" she whispered to him. "It's very hard
for her."

Mr. Hobbs l