And the stock! Blest if the old cows did n't carry
udders like camp-ovens, and had so much milk that one could track them
everywhere they went--they leaked so. The old plough-horses, too--only a
few months before dug out of the dam with a spade, and slung up between
heaven and earth for a week, and fed and prayed for regularly by
Dad--actually bolted one day with the dray because Joe rattled a dish of
corn behind them. Even the pet kangaroo was nearly jumping out of its
skin; and it took the big black "goanna" that used to come after eggs all
its time to beat Dad from the barn to the nearest tree, so fat was it.
And such a season for butterflies and grasshoppers, and grubs and snakes,
and native bears! Given an ass, an elephant, and an empty wine-bottle or
two, and one might have thought Noah's ark had been emptied at our
selection.
Two days to Christmas. The sun getting low. An old cow and a heifer in
the stock-yard. Dad in, admiring them; Mother and Sal squinting through
the rails; little Bill perched on one of the round posts, nursing the
steel and a long knife; Joe running hard from the barn with a plough-rein.
Dad was wondering which beast to kill, and expressed a preference for the
heifer.
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