“You had Jo fooled about her looks—you had me, too.”

“No, look here. I can’t make it out. It’s four years since I came past this way, and I stopped here two days. The husband was a pal of mine once, down the West Coast—a fine, big chap, with a voice on him like a trombone. She’d been a bar-maid down the Coast, as pretty as a wax doll. The coach used to come this way then once a fortnight, that was before they opened the railway up Napier way, and she had no end of a time! Told me once in a confidential moment that she knew one hundred and twenty-five different ways of kissing!”

“Oh, go on, Jim! She isn’t the same woman!”

“Course she is. I can’t make it out. What I think is the old man’s cleared out and left her: that’s all my eye about shearing.”

Through the dark we saw the gleam of the kid’s pinafore. She trailed over to us with a basket in her hand, the milk billy in the other. I unpacked the basket, the child standing by.

“Come over here,” said Jim, snapping his fingers at her.

She went, the lamp from the inside of the tent cast a bright light over her. A mean, pale, undersized brat, with whitish hair, and weak eyes. She stood, legs wide apart and her stomach protruding.

“What do you do all day?” asked Jim.

She scraped out one ear with her little finger, looked at the result and said, “Draw.”

“Huh! What do you draw? Leave your ears alone!”

“Pictures.”

“What on?”

“Bits of butter paper an’ a pencil of my Mumma’s.”

“Boh! What a lot of words at one time!” Jim rolled his eyes at her. “Baa-lambs and moo-cows?”

“No, everything. I’ll draw all of you when you’re gone, and your horses and the tent, and that one,” she pointed to me, “with no clothes on in the creek.” She turned and stared at me with a strange look that chilled my blood. “I saw you. The lark saw you too.”

“Where’s your Dad?” said Jim.

The kid pouted. “I won’t tell you because I don’t like yer face!” She started operations on the other ear.

“Here,” I said. “Take the basket, get along home and tell the other man his supper’s ready.”

“I don’t want to.”

“I’ll give you a box on the ear if you don’t,” said Jim, savagely.

“Hie! I’ll tell my Mumma. I’ll tell Mumma.” The kid fled.

We ate until we were full, and had arrived at the smoke stage before Jo came back, very flushed and jaunty, a whisky-bottle in his hand.

“ ’Ave a drink, you two!” he shouted, carrying off matters with a high hand.

“One hundred and twenty-five different ways,” I murmured to Jim.

“She wants us to go up there to-night, and have a comfortable chat. I,” he declared, waving his hand airily, “I got ’er round.”

“Trust you for that,” laughed Jim. “But did she tell you where her old man’s got to?”

Jo looked up. “Shearing! You ’eard ’er, you fool!”

“I’d rather not. Let’s stay here,” I suggested. “There’s something not right with that woman and her kid.”

“Suit yourself, but you’ll be spending the night out here on your alone,” said Jim, already on his feet. “I’m not staying out to-night with that storm on the way.”

Jo’s mind was already set and his reasons had little to do with the weather. I knew there was no sense in facing the storm on my own, so I followed them both back through the dark paddocks to the whare.

The woman had cleaned and fixed up the room, it appeared almost welcoming in the warm lamp-light. There was even a bouquet of sweet-williams on the table. She and I sat one side of the table, Jo and Jim the other. An oil lamp was set between us, the whisky-bottle and glasses, and a jug of water. The kid knelt against one of the forms, drawing on butter paper; I wondered, grimly, if she was attempting the creek episode.