Pip chose one, a grey, with long, fleet-looking legs and a narrow, beautiful head; he prided himself upon knowing something about “points.”  Judy picked a black, with reddish, restless eyes, but Mr. Hassal refused it because it had an uncertain temper, so she had to be content with a brown with a soft, satiny nose.

Meg asked for “something very quiet” in a whisper Judy and Pip could not hear, and was given a ruggy horse that had carried Mrs. Hassal eighteen years ago.  Each animal was to be at the complete disposal of the young people during their stay at Yarrahappini, but the rides would have to take place before breakfast or after tea, they were told, if they wanted any pleasure out of them; the rest of the day was unbearable on horseback.  Nellie was disappointed in the sheep, exceedingly so.  She had expected to find great snow-white beautiful creatures that would be tame and allow her to put ribbon on their necks and lead them about.

From the hill-top the second morning she saw paddock after paddock, each with a brown, slowly moving mass; she ran down through the sunshine with Bunty to view them more closely.

“Oh, what a shame!” she exclaimed, actual tears of disappointment springing to her eyes when she saw the great fat things with their long, dirty, ragged-looking fleece.

“Wait for a time, little woman,” Mr. Hassal said; “just you wait till we give them their baths.”

CHAPTER XVII Cattle-Drafting at Yarrahappini

“To wheel the wild scrub cattle at the yard With a running fire of stockwhip and a fiery run of hoofs.”

Pip could hardly sleep one night, a month after their arrival, for thinking of the cattle drafting that was on the programme for the morrow.  He had been casting about for some fresh occupation, far he was a boy to whom variety was the salt of life.  At first he had been certain he could never tire of shooting rabbits.  Mr. Hassal had given him the “jolliest little stunner of a gun,” and, Tettawonga had gone out with him the first day; and had been very scornful about his enthusiasm when he shot two.

“Ba’al good, gun do.  Plenty fellow rabbit longa scrub, budgery way north, budgery way south; budgery way eblywhere.  Ba’al good barbed wire fence do, ba’al good poison do.  Bah!”

But Pip was not to be discouraged, and really thought he had done great good to the Yarrahappini estate by shooting those two soft, fleet brown things.  He took them home and displayed them proudly to the girls, cleaned his perfectly clean gun, and sallied forth the next day.

Tettawonga took his pipe from between his lips when he saw him again and laughed, a loud cackling laugh, that made Pip flush with anger.

“Kimbriki and kimbriki, too!  Rabbit he catti, curri-curri now.  Boy come long with cawbawn gun, rabbit jerund drekaly, go burri, grass grow, sheep get fat-ha, ha, he, he!”