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 Hin.

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 Hin 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 Hin. “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 dishwater. 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 to be the most recent number. A table with an ironing board and wash-tub on it — some wooden forms — a black horsehair sofa, and some broken cane chairs pushed against the walls. The mantelpiece above the stove was draped in pink paper, further ornamented with dried grasses and ferns and a coloured print of Richard Seddon. There were four doors — one, judging from the smell, let into the “Store”, one on to the “backyard”, through the third I saw the bedroom. Flies buzzed in circles round the ceiling, and treacle papers and bundles of dried clover were pinned to the window curtains. I was alone in the room — she had gone into the store for the embrocation.