have arrived, and I am going out to see their goods.  There were nineteen hawkers here last week.  I am sitting on a squatter’s chair and writing on a table in the veranda, and the road goes right by the flower-garden.  That is how I see everyone.) Have you had rain down there this week?  They have great squawking about the drought up here.  I wish they could see Goulburn, and then they’d know what drought means.  I don’t know what sort of a bobberie they would kick up.  It’s pretty dry out on the run, but everyone calls the paddocks about the house an oasis.  You see there are such splendid facilities for irrigation here.  Uncle has put on a lot of men.  They have cut races between the two creeks between which the house is situated.  Every now and again they let the water from these over the orchard gardens and about a hundred acres of paddock land around the house.  The grass therein is up to the horses’ fetlocks.  There is any amount of rhubarb and early vegetables in the garden.  Grannie says there is a splendid promise of fruit in the orchard, and the flower-garden is a perfect dream.  This is the dearest old place in the world.  Dozens of people plague grannie to be let put their horses in the grass—­especially shearers, there are droves of them going home now—­but she won’t let them; wants all the grass for her own stock.  Uncle has had to put another man on to mind it, or at night all the wires are cut and the horses put in.  (An agent, I think by the cut of him, is asking for grannie.  I’ll have to run and find her.) It is very lively here.  Never a night but we have the house full of agents or travellers of one sort or another, and there are often a dozen swaggies in the one day.

Harold Beecham is my favourite of all the men hereaway.  He is delightfully big and quiet.  He isn’t good-looking, but I like his face.  (Been attending to the demands of a couple of impudent swaggies.  Being off the road at Possum Gully, you escape them.) For the love of life, next time you write, fire into the news at once and don’t half-fill your letter telling me about the pen and your bad writing.  I am scribbling at the rate Of 365 miles an hour, and don’t care a jot whether it is good writing or not.

Auntie, uncle, Frank Hawden and I, are going to ride to Yabtree church next Sunday.  It is four miles beyond Five-Bob Downs, so that is sixteen miles.  It is the nearest church.  I expect it will be rare fun.  There will be such a crowd coming home, and that always makes the horses delightfully frisky. (A man wants to put his horses in the paddock for the night, so I will have to find uncle.) I never saw such a place for men.  It is all men, men, men.  You cannot go anywhere outside the house but you see men coming and going in all directions.  It wouldn’t do to undress without bothering to drop the window-blind like we used at Possum Gully.  Grannie and uncle say it is a curse to be living beside the road, as it costs them a tremendous lot a year.  There are seven lemon-trees here, loaded (another hawker).  I hope you think of me sometimes.  I am just as ugly as ever. (A traveller wants to buy a loaf of bread.)