Sal squealed.
"DROP IT--DROP IT, Bob!" Anderson shouted, giving chase. Bob dropped it
on the road.
"DAMN IT!" said Dad, glaring at Mother, "wot d' y' ALL want out
'ere?...Y-YOU brute!" (to the dog, calmly licking its lips).
Then Anderson and the two men went away.
But when we had paid sixty pounds to the storekeeper and thirty pounds in
interest; and paid for the seed and the reaping and threshing of the
wheat; and bought three plough-horses, and a hack for Dave; and a
corn-sheller, and a tank, and clothes for us all; and put rations in the
house; and lent Anderson five pounds; and improved Shingle Hut; and so on;
very little of the two hundred pounds was left.
Mother spoke of getting a cow. The children, she said, could n't live
without milk and when Dad heard from Johnson and Dwyer that Eastbrook dairy
cattle were to be sold at auction, he said he would go down and buy one.
Very early. The stars had scarcely left the sky. There was a lot of
groping and stumbling about the room. Dad and Dave had risen and were
preparing to go to the sale.
I don't remember if the sky was golden or gorgeous at all, or if the
mountain was clothed in mist, or if any fragrance came from the
wattle-trees when they were leaving; but Johnson, without hat or boots,
was picking splinters off the slabs of his hut to start his fire with,
and a mile further on Smith's dog was barking furiously.
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