prevailed. Still they did it -— for him, and what great work they did, too. Some of it has lasted to this day.
A quiet, drowsy afternoon—scarcely any life about the homestead. Only the flies and the wild bees had any life in them. The Governor, with Joe Eustace and Ned Kearney and Warabah, an aboriginal recommended to the Governor by Ilaly of Taabinga, were out mustering cows towards the Condamine, to wean the calves and give the mothers a chance in the drought. They had been away three or four days, and were expected to return some time, that afternoon with the mob. What wouldn’t Ted and I, kids and all that we were, have given to be in the muster! But mustering wasn’t for us — not then. Instead, we had to go to school, along with Dorothy and Zulu and Tar-pot, two ebony-skinned, frizzle-haired aboriginal kids that had become separated from a tribe on the river during a "dispersal" by the police patrol, and to whom mother had taken fancy. A slab and bark edifice stood about a hundred yards away from the "big house." It was known as the station school, and was furnished with a couple of short desks, blackboards, maps, a globe, just like any other school, and big Miss Mary Rumble, the teacher — Lord, how I remember the old girl, with her red nose, and her white stockings falling over her elastic-side boots! She was also "governess. But why we were kept shut up in that dull schoo] with Mary Rumble trying to hammer things into our heads that didn't matter tuppence to us or to anyone else, while so much excitement was going
