Had he kept clear-headed he was a smart fellow, and gave promise of doing well, but his head would not stand alcohol, and by it he was undermined in no time.  In considerably less than a twelvemonth all the spare capital in his coffers from the disposal of Bruggabrong and the Bin Bins had been squandered.  He had become so hard up that to pay the drovers in his last venture he was forced to sell the calves of the few milch-cows retained for household uses.

At this time it came to my father’s knowledge that one of our bishops had money held in trust for the Church.  On good security he was giving this out for usury, the same as condemned in the big Bible, out of which he took the text of the dry-hash sermons with which he bored his fashionable congregations in his cathedral on Sundays.

Father took advantage of this Reverend’s inconsistency and mortgaged Possum Gully.  With the money thus obtained he started once more and managed to make a scant livelihood and pay the interest on the bishop’s loan.  In four or five years he had again reached loggerheads.  The price of stock had fallen so that there was nothing to be made out of dealing in them.

Richard Melvyn resolved to live as those around him—­start a dairy; run it with his family, who would also rear poultry for sale.

As instruments of the dairying trade he procured fifty milch-cows, the calves of which had to be “poddied”, and a hand cream-separator.

I was in my fifteenth year when we began dairying; the twins Horace and Gertie were, as you already know, eleven months younger.  Horace, had there been any one to train him, contained the makings of a splendid man; but having no one to bring him up in the way he should go, he was a churlish and trying bully, and the issue of his character doubtful.

Gertie milked thirteen cows, and I eighteen, morning and evening.  Horace and mother, between them, milked the remaining seventeen.

Among the dairying fraternity little toddlers, ere they are big enough to hold a bucket, learn to milk.  Thus their hands become inured to the motion, and it does not affect them.  With us it was different.  Being almost full grown when we started to milk, and then plunging heavily into the exercise, it had a painful effect upon us.  Our hands and arms, as far as the elbows, swelled, so that our sleep at night was often disturbed by pain.

Mother made the butter.  She had to rise at two and three o’clock in the morning, in order that it would be cool and firm enough to print for market.

Jane Haizelip had left us a year previously, and we could afford no one to take her place.  The heavy work told upon my gentle, refined mother.  She grew thin and careworn, and often cross.  My father’s share of the work was to break in the wild cows, separate the milk, and take the butter into town to the grocer’s establishment where we obtained our supplies.