in a jiffy. Got the dress—bought some stuff at Clayton's and made my sister Bertha sew it while I had dinner. I knew what would be happening this end of the line—and I knew you'd see Helen through for the sake of getting one in at Henry."
"How thoughtful of you, Doctor!" said the old woman. "I'll tell Anne I found it under my dolman."
"Yes, that's your ticket," said Doctor Malcolm.
"But of course Helen would have forgotten the whipping by to-morrow morning, and I'd promised her a new doll..." The old woman spoke regretfully.
Doctor Malcolm snapped his bag together.
"It's no good talking to the old bird," he thought, "she doesn't take in half I say. Don't seem to have got any forrader than doing Helen out of a doll."
(1910)
THE WOMAN AT THE STORE
ALL that day the heat was terrible. The wind blew close to the ground; it rooted among the tussock grass, slithered along the road, so that the white pumice dust swirled in our faces, settled and sifted over us and was like a dry-skin itching for growth on our bodies. The horses stumbled along, coughing and chuffing. The pack horse was sick—with a big, open sore rubbed under the belly. Now and again she stopped short, threw back her head, looked at us as though she were going to cry, and whinnied. Hundreds of larks shrilled; the sky was slate colour, and the sound of the larks reminded me of slate pencils scraping over its surface. There was nothing to be seen but wave after wave of tussock grass, patched with purple orchids and manuka bushes covered with thick spider webs.
Jo rode ahead. He wore a blue galatea shirt, corduroy trousers and riding boots. A white handkerchief, spotted with red—it looked as though his nose had been bleeding on it—was knotted round his throat. Wisps of white hair straggled from under his wideawake—his moustache and eyebrows were called white—he slouched in the saddle, grunting. Not once that day had he sung
"I don't care, for don't you see,
My wife's mother was in front of me!"
It was the first day we had been without it for a month, and now there seemed something uncanny in his silence. Jim rode beside me, white as a clown; his black eyes glittered, and he kept shooting out his tongue and moistening his lips. He was dressed in a Jaeger vest, and a pair of blue duck trousers, fastened round the waist with a plaited leather belt. We had hardly spoken since dawn. At noon we had lunched off fly biscuits and apricots by the side of a swampy creek.
"My stomach feels like the crop of a hen," said Jo. "Now then, Jim, you're the bright boy of the party—where's this 'ere store you kep' on talking about. 'Oh, yes,' you says, 'I know a fine store, with a paddock for the horses and a creek runnin' through, owned by a friend of mine who'll give yer a bottle of whisky before 'e shakes hands with yer.' I'd like ter see that place—merely as a matter of curiosity—not that I'd ever doubt yer word—as yer know very well—but..."
Jim laughed. "Don't forget there's a woman too, Jo, with blue eyes and yellow hair, who'll promise you something else before she shakes hands with you. Put that in your pipe and smoke it."
"The heat's making you balmy," said Jo. But he dug his knees into the horse. We shambled on. I half fell asleep, and had a sort of uneasy dream that the horses were not moving forward at all—then that I was on a rocking-horse, and my old mother was scolding me for raising such a fearful dust from the drawing-room carpet. "You've entirely worn off the pattern of the carpet," I heard her saying, and she gave the reins a tug. I snivelled and woke to find Jim leaning over me, maliciously smiling.
"That was a case of all but," said he. "I just caught you. What'sup? Been bye-bye?"
"No!" I raised my head. "Thank the Lord we're arriving somewhere."
We were on the brow of the hill, and below us there was a whare roofed with corrugated iron. It stood in a garden, rather far back from the road—a big paddock opposite, and a creek and a clump of young willow trees. A thin line of blue smoke stood up straight from the chimney of the whare; and as I looked a woman came out, followed by a child and a sheep dog—the woman carrying what appeared to me a black stick. She made gestures at us.
The horses put on a final spurt, Jo took off his wideawake, shouted, threw out his chest, and began singing, "I don't care, for don't you see..." The sun pushed through the pale clouds and shed a vivid light over the scene. It gleamed on the woman's yellow hair, over her flapping pinafore and the rifle she was carrying. The child hid behind her, and the yellow dog, a mangy beast, scuttled back into the whare, his tail between his legs. We drew rein and dismounted.
"Hallo," screamed the woman. "I thought you was three' awks. My kid comes runnin' in ter me. 'Mumma,' says she, 'there's three brown things comin' over the 'ill,' says she. An' I comes out smart, I can tell yer. 'They'll be' awks,' I says to her. Oh, the' awks about 'ere, yer wouldn't believe."
The "kid" gave us the benefit of one eye from behind the woman's pinafore—then retired again.
"Where's your old man?" asked Jim.
The woman blinked rapidly, screwing up her face.
"Away shearin'. Bin away a month. I suppose yer not goin' to stop, are yer? There's a storm comin' up."
"You bet we are," said Jo. "So you're on your lonely, missus?"
She stood, pleating the frills of her pinafore, and glancing from one to the other of us, like a hungry bird. I smiled at the thought of how Jim had pulled Jo's leg about her. Certainly her eyes were blue, and what hair she had was yellow, but ugly. She was a figure of fun. Looking at her, you felt there was nothing but sticks and wires under that pinafore—her front teeth were knocked out, she had red pulpy hands, and she wore on her feet a pair of dirty Bluchers.
"I'll go and turn out the horses," said Jim.
"Got any embrocation? Poi's rubbed herself to hell!"
"Arf a mo!" The woman stood silent a moment, her nostrils expanding as she breathed. Then she shouted violently. "I'd rather you didn't stop...You can't, and there's the end of it. I don't let out that paddock any more. You'll have to go on; I ain't got nothing!"
"Well, I'm blest!" said Jo, heavily. He pulled me aside. "Gone a bit off'er dot," he whispered. "Too much alone, you know" very significantly. "Turn the sympathetic tap on' er, she'll come round all right."
But there was no need—she had come round by herself.
"Stop if yer like!" she muttered, shrugging her shoulders. To me—"I'll give yer the embrocation if yer come along."
"Right-o, I'll take it down to them." We walked together up the garden path. It was planted on both sides with cabbages. They smelled like stale dish-water. Of flowers there were double poppies and sweet-williams. One little patch was divided off by pawa shells—presumably it belonged to the child—for she ran from her mother and began to grub in it with a broken clothes-peg. The yellow dog lay across the doorstep, biting fleas; the woman kicked him away.
"Gar-r, get away, you beast the place ain't tidy. I 'aven't 'ad time ter fix things to-day—been ironing. Come right in."
It was a large room, the walls plastered with old pages of English periodicals. Queen Victoria's Jubilee appeared
