. She had brown eyes,
nearly red, and a little wild-looking at times, and a sharp face--ground
sharp by hardship--the cheeks drawn in. She had an expression
like--well, like a woman who had been very curious and suspicious at one
time, and wanted to know everybody's business and hear everything, and
had lost all her curiosity, without losing the expression or the quick
suspicious movements of the head. I don't suppose you understand. I
can't explain it any other way. She was not more than forty.

I remember the first morning I saw her. I was going up the creek to look
at the selection for the first time, and called at the hut to see if she
had a bit of fresh mutton, as I had none and was sick of 'corned beef'.

'Yes--of--course,' she said, in a sharp nasty tone, as if to say, 'Is
there anything more you want while the shop's open?' I'd met just the
same sort of woman years before while I was carrying swag between the
shearing-sheds in the awful scrubs out west of the Darling river, so I
didn't turn on my heels and walk away. I waited for her to speak again.

'Come--inside,' she said, 'and sit down. I see you've got the waggon
outside. I s'pose your name's Wilson, ain't it? You're thinkin' about
takin' on Harry Marshfield's selection up the creek, so I heard. Wait
till I fry you a chop and boil the billy.'

Her voice sounded, more than anything else, like a voice coming out of
a phonograph--I heard one in Sydney the other day--and not like a voice
coming out of her. But sometimes when she got outside her everyday
life on this selection she spoke in a sort of--in a sort of lost
groping-in-the-dark kind of voice.

She didn't talk much this time--just spoke in a mechanical way of the
drought, and the hard times, 'an' butter 'n' eggs bein' down, an' her
husban' an' eldest son bein' away, an' that makin' it so hard for her.'

I don't know how many children she had. I never got a chance to count
them, for they were nearly all small, and shy as piccaninnies, and used
to run and hide when anybody came. They were mostly nearly as black as
piccaninnies too. She must have averaged a baby a-year for years--and
God only knows how she got over her confinements! Once, they said, she
only had a black gin with her. She had an elder boy and girl, but she
seldom spoke of them. The girl, 'Liza', was 'in service in Sydney.' I'm
afraid I knew what that meant. The elder son was 'away'. He had been a
bit of a favourite round there, it seem