The Purification of Mulfera
when they fell, someone else had to find them while Carmichael cursed, for his naked eye was as blind as a bat's.
"Let's go mustering on Sunday," suggested the overseer—"every blessed man! Let him find the whole place deserted, homestead and hut!"
"Or let's get blind for the occasion," was the bookkeeper's idea—"every mother's son!"
"That would do," agreed the overseer, "if we got just blind enough. And we might get the blacks from Poonee Creek to come and join the dance."
The overseer was a dapper Victorian with a golden mustache twisted rakishly up and down at either end respectively, like an overturned letter S. He lived up to the name of Smart. The book-keeper was a servile echo with a character and a face of putty. He had once perpetrated an opprobrious ode to the overseer, and had answered to the name of Chaucer ever since.
Carmichael leaned back to look from one of these worthies to the other, and his spectacled eyes flamed with mordant scorn.
"I suppose you think you're funny, you fellows," said he, and without the oath which was a sign of his good-will, except when he lost his temper with the sheep. "If so, I wish you'd get outside to enter-
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