“Si-r-r-r, I can and will account for it.  Look you at every one of those children.  Every one, right down to this little tot,” indicating a little girl of five, “has to milk and work hard before and after school, besides walk on an average two miles to and from school in this infernal heat.  Most of the elder boys and girls milk on an average fourteen cows morning and evening.  You try that treatment for a week or two, my fine gentleman, and then see if your fist doesn’t ache and shake so that you can’t write at all.  See if you won’t look a trifle dozy.  Stupidity of country people be hanged!  If you had to work from morning till night in the heat and dust, and get precious little for it too, I bet you wouldn’t have much time to scrape your finger-nails, read science notes, and look smart.”  Here he took off his coat and shaped up to his superior.

The inspector drew back in consternation.

“Mr Harris, you forget yourself!”

At this juncture they went outside together.  What happened there we never knew.  That is all we heard of the matter except the numerous garbled accounts which were carried home that afternoon.

A DROUGHT IDYLL

“Sybylla, what are you doing?  Where is your mother?”

“I’m ironing.  Mother’s down at the fowl-house seeing after some chickens.  What do you want?”

It was my father who addressed me.  Time, 2 o’clock p.m.  Thermometer hung in the shade of the veranda registering 105 1/2 degrees.

“I see Blackshaw coming across the flat.  Call your mother.  You bring the leg-ropes—­I’ve got the dog-leg.  Come at once; we’ll give the cows another lift.  Poor devils—­might as well knock ’em on the head at once, but there might be rain next moon.  This drought can’t last for ever.”

I called mother, got the leg-ropes, and set off, pulling my sun-bonnet closely over my face to protect my eyes from the dust which was driving from the west in blinding clouds.  The dog-leg to which father had referred was three poles about eight or ten feet long, strapped together so they could be stood up.  It was an arrangement father had devised to facilitate our labour in lifting the cows.  A fourth and longer pole was placed across the fork formed by the three, and to one end of this were tied a couple of leg-ropes, after being placed round the beast, one beneath the flank and one around the girth.  On the other end of this pole we would put our weight while one man would lift with the tail and another with the horns.  New-chum cows would sulk, and we would have great work with them; but those used to the performance would help themselves, and up they’d go as nice as a daisy.  The only art needed was to draw the pole back quickly before the cows could move, or the leg-ropes would pull them over again.