“Didn’t you see how Jo had been titivating? He said to me before he went up to the whare, ‘Dang it! she’ll look better by night light — at any rate, my buck, she’s female flesh!’”

“You had Jo 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’s been barmaid 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, Hin! 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. Sweet life! The only people who come through now are Maoris and sundowners!”

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 Hin, snapping his fingers at her.

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

“What do you do all day?” asked Hin.

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. I looked at her where she wouldn’t see me from.”

“Thanks very much. How ripping of you,” said Hin. “Where’s Dad?”

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 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 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. “’Ere, shove along the cups.”

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

“What’s that? Oh! stow it!” said Jo. “Why ’ave you always got your knife into me? You gas like a kid at a Sunday School beano. She wants us to go there to-night and have a comfortable chat. I” — he waved his hand airily — “I got ’er round.”

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

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

The woman had fixed up the room, even to a light 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. But Jo had been right about night time.