took a contract--to put up a fence or wool-shed,
or sink a dam or something--Mary would say, 'You ought to knock a buggy
out of this job, Joe;' but something always turned up--bad weather or
sickness. Once I cut my foot with the adze and was laid up; and, another
time, a dam I was making was washed away by a flood before I finished
it. Then Mary would say, 'Ah, well--never mind, Joe. Wait till we are
better off.' But she felt it hard the time I built a wool-shed and
didn't get paid for it, for we'd as good as settled about another
second-hand buggy then.

I always had a fancy for carpentering, and was handy with tools. I made
a spring-cart--body and wheels--in spare time, out of colonial hardwood,
and got Little the blacksmith to do the ironwork; I painted the cart
myself. It wasn't much lighter than one of the tip-drays I had, but it
WAS a spring-cart, and Mary pretended to be satisfied with it: anyway, I
didn't hear any more of the buggy for a while.

I sold that cart, for fourteen pounds, to a Chinese gardener who wanted
a strong cart to carry his vegetables round through the Bush. It was
just before our first youngster came: I told Mary that I wanted the
money in case of extra expense--and she didn't fret much at losing
that cart. But the fact was, that I was going to make another try for
a buggy, as a present for Mary when the child was born. I thought of
getting the turn-out while she was laid up, keeping it dark from her
till she was on her feet again, and then showing her the buggy standing
in the shed. But she had a bad time, and I had to have the doctor
regularly, and get a proper nurse, and a lot of things extra; so the
buggy idea was knocked on the head. I was set on it, too: I'd thought of
how, when Mary was up and getting strong, I'd say one morning, 'Go round
and have a look in the shed, Mary; I've got a few fowls for you,' or
something like that--and follow her round to watch her eyes when she saw
the buggy. I never told Mary about that--it wouldn't have done any good.

Later on I got some good timber--mostly scraps that were given to
me--and made a light body for a spring-cart. Galletly, the coach-builder
at Cudgeegong, had got a dozen pairs of American hickory wheels up from
Sydney, for light spring-carts, and he let me have a pair for cost price
and carriage. I got him to iron the cart, and he put it through
the paint-shop for nothing. He sent it out, too, at the tail of Tom
Tarrant's big van--to in