She knew Ned was in the South, somewhere, though she had not seen him.  He had come down on some business, in blissful ignorance of the nearness of the coming storm, but would be called back, she knew, now this new trouble had begun.  And then he would be arrested, she was sure, because he was outspoken and fearless and would urge the men to stand out till the last, and would be sent to prison by legal trickery under this new law the papers said had been discovered; all so that the unions might break down and the squatters do as they liked.  Which, perhaps, was why her thoughts for the time being were particularly tinged with pessimism.  If the vague something called “law and order” was determined to be broken so that the bush could be dragooned for the squatter it seemed to her as well to make a substantial breakage while men were about it—­and she did not believe they would.

She placed a cool damp cloth on the baby’s head, wishing that its mother would come up, Mrs. Hobbs having been persuaded to go downstairs for some tea and a rest while Nellie watched by the sick child and having been entangled in household affairs the moment she appeared in the dingy kitchen where Mrs. Macanany, to the neglect of her own home, was “seeing to things.”  The hard breathing was becoming easier.  Nellie brought the candle burning in a broken cup.  The flushed face was growing paler and more natural.  The twitching muscles were stilling.  There was a change.

One unused to seeing Death approach would have thought the baby settling down at last to a refreshing, health-reviving sleep.  Nellie had lived for years where the children die like rabbits, and knew.

“Mrs. Hobbs!” she called, softly but urgently, running to the stairs.

The poor woman came hastily to the foot.  “Quick, Mrs. Hobbs!” said Nellie, beckoning.

“Oh, Mrs. Macanany!  The baby’s dying!” cried poor Mrs. Hobbs, tripping on her dragging skirts in her frantic haste to get upstairs.  Mrs. Macanany followed.  The children set up a boohoo that brought Mr. Hobbs from the front doorstep where he had been sitting smoking.  He rushed up the stairs also.  When he reached the top he saw, by the light of the candle in Nellie’s hand, a little form lying still and white; its mother crouched on the floor, wailing over it.

It was a small room, almost bare, the bedstead of blistered iron, the mattress thin, the bedding tattered and worn.  A soapbox was the chair on which Nellie had been sitting; there was no other.  Against the wall, above a rough shelf, was a piece of mirror-glass without a frame.  The window in the sloping roof was uncurtained.  On the poor bed, under the tattered sheet, was the dead baby.  And on the floor, writhing, was its mother, Mrs. Macanany trying to comfort her between the pauses of her own vehement neighbourly grief.

Nellie closed the dead baby’s eyes, set the candle on the shelf and moved to the door where Mr. Hobbs stood bewildered and dumbfoundered, his pipe still in his hand.  “Speak to her!” she whispered to him.  “It’s very hard for her.”