“She wrote in two or three days to say that she had got a place, just enough to pay her board, and expected to get a better one soon.  She was always expecting something better when she wrote and my aunt when I saw her wagged her head and said that rolling stones gathered no moss.  The interest-day came round and father just managed to scrape the money together.  They’d got so poor and downhearted that I used to cry at night thinking of them and I used to tell Mary when I wrote.  I used to blame myself for it once but I don’t now.  We all get to believe at last in what must be will be, Ned.  And then I had a letter from Mary telling me she had a much better place and in two or three weeks mother wrote such a proud pleased letter to say that Mary had sent them a five-pound note.  And for about a year Mary sent them two or three pounds every month and at Christmas five pounds again.  Then her letters stopped altogether, both to them and to me.  To me she had kept writing always the same, kind and chatty and about herself.  She told me she had to save and scrape a little but that she had hope some day to be able to get me down.  I never dreamed it was not so, not even when the letters stopped, though afterwards, when I went through them, I saw that the handwriting, in the later ones, was shaky a little.

“We waited and waited to hear from her but no letter came to anybody.  There was a girl I knew whose father had been working in Toowoomba and who was in the same shop for a little while and her father was going to Brisbane to a job and they were all going.  He was a carpenter.  She and I had got to be friendly after Mary went away and she promised to find her but couldn’t.  You see we were bush folks still and didn’t think anything of streets and addresses and thought the post office enough.  And when two months passed and no letter came mother wrote half crazy, and I didn’t know what to do, and I wrote to the girl I knew to ask her to get me work so that I could go to look for Mary.  It just happened that they wanted a body hand in her shop and they promised me the place and I went the next day I heard.  They wanted a week’s notice where I was working and didn’t want to give up my things without but aunt went and got them and gave me the money for my fare and told me if I wanted to come back to write to her and she’d find the money again.  Poor old aunt!  I shall never forget her.  Her heart was all right if she had got hard and unhappy.  That’s how I got to Brisbane to look for Mary.

“I went to board with the girl I knew.  I was earning ten shillings a week and paid that for my board and helped with the ironing for my washing.  Her father had got out of work again for times were bad and they were glad to get my money.  Lizzie got ten shillings a week and she had a brother about fourteen who earned five shillings.  That was about all they had to live on often, nine in the family with me and the rent seven shillings for a shell of