“For a long while she had the idea of going to Brisbane to work.  She said there were chances to make big wages there, because forewomen and draping hands were wanted more and girls who had anything in them had a better show than in a little place.  I used to remind her that it was said there were lots too many girls in Brisbane and that unless you had friends there you couldn’t earn your bread.  But she used to say that one must live everywhere and that things couldn’t be worse than they were in Toowoomba.  You see she was anxious to be able to earn enough to help with the mortgage.  Father had been taken sick shearing:  and had to knock off and so didn’t earn what he expected and that year they’d got deeper into debt and things looked worse than ever.  One day he came into Toowoomba with his cart, looking ten years older.  Next day, Mary told me she didn’t care what happened, she was going to Brisbane to see if she couldn’t earn some money or else they’d lose the selection and that she’d spoken for her place for me and I was to have it.  She’d been saving up for a good while what she could by shillings and sixpences and pennies, doing sewing work for anybody who’d pay her anything in her own time.  She said that when she’d got a five-pound-a-week place she’d come back for a visit and bring me a new dress, and mother and father and the others all sorts of things and pay the interest all herself and that I should have the next best place in the shop and come to live with her.  We talked about going into business together and whether it wouldn’t be better for father to throw up the selection after a while and live with us in Brisbane.  Ah!  What simple fools we were!  If we had but known!

“So Mary went to Brisbane, with just a few shillings beside her ticket and hardly knowing a soul in the big town.  I went to the station with her in the middle of the night.  She was going by the night train because then she’d get to Brisbane in the morning and have the day in front of her and she had nowhere to go if she got in at night.  I recollect thinking how sweetly pretty she looked as she sat in the carriage all alone.

“You remember her, Ned?  Well, she got prettier and prettier as she grew older, not tall and big and strong-looking like me but smaller than I was even then and with a fresh round face that always smiled at you.  She had small feet and hands and hair that curled naturally and her skin was dark, not fair like mine.  People in Toowoomba used to turn and look at her when she went out and everybody liked her.  She was so kind to everybody.  And she was full of courage though she did cry a little when she kissed me good-bye, because I cried so.  I could never have stopped crying had I but known how I should see her again.