She refused the dreams house-room in her conscious thoughts.  She looked at the shining billy and big enamelled mugs they had bought that day, at the bright brown leather straps that smelt so pleasantly new, fastened round two grey and two brown blankets.  Louis came in and made her strap the two blankets on her back to see if they tired her.  In spite of the heat of the day she scarcely felt them.

“This is what they call Matilda,” he told her, weighing the swag in his hand.

“I can carry you both if you get tired,” said she, looking from Matilda to him.

She had asked her uncle for ten pounds.  He characteristically made no comments about her omission to mention a husband when she saw him at Melbourne, and remarked that they would be very pleased to see her and her husband any time at Wooratonga.  When he proved his unquestioning kindness she wished she had not had to ask him for money.

That night they packed.  There was a new lodger downstairs who proved very helpful.  He had come from the Never-Never Land to knock down a cheque in Sydney; in the ordinary course of things he would have been blind to the world till the cheques were all spent.  The night of his arrival, when he was only softened by a few drinks after six months’ abstinence, the Salvation Army had got him.  He had saved his soul, his liver and his money at the same time.  And he was bursting with information.

“You take the train to Cook’s Wall, chum,” he said, spitting on his hands and trying the strength of the good leather straps.  He had tapped the billy and the mugs with a wise finger, giving them advice about soaking their boots in linseed oil for a few days.

“Yous ought to buy your tea and baccy and flour in Sydney.  It’s dear and poor the further yous get,” he told them.  And—­

“Cook’s Wall is the rail-head, chum,” he said.  “It’s in the Lower Warrilow.  There’s a bit o’ manganese down there, and they’re clearing land.  Plenty of work waiting.  Lot of new squatters—­small squatters without two fardens to rub together and make a chink.  Them assisted lot.  They’re always glad of help, clearing scrub.  They get a loand off of the Gov’ment for tools and seeds and stock, but they’ve got to clear the land—­within three years, I think it is.  Hard work, chum.”

Marcella and Louis looked at each other with shining eyes.

“That’s the place for us, old lady!” he said.  “I’ve done clearing in New Zealand, and gorse grubbing.  Makes you as black as your hat, and you sleep like a million tops and eat half a sheep at a sitting—­”

“You’ll get a job there, ma,” he went on, turning the spigot of his information before her now.  “They’re always glad of cooks for the huts where the men live.  And they don’t pay so bad, either.  You get your rations, of course.  It’s rotten hard for lads that have been working fourteen hours in the open air to come in and start cooking.”