Let Us Hope It Was Because Of The Woman, And The Books, And
The Cabbage, With The Cabbage Placed Last.
Then with a pull at his hat, and a "good-bye, ma'am, good luck," the man
from Beyanst rode out of the gundy camp, and out of our lives, to become
one of its pleasant memories.
The man from Beyanst was our only visitor for the first week, in that
camp, and then after that we had some one every day.
Dan went into the homestead for stores, and set the ball rolling by
returning at sundown in triumph with a great find: a lady traveller, the
wife of one of the Inland Telegraph masters. Her husband and little son
were with her, but - well, they were only men. It was five months since I
had seen a white woman, and all I saw at the time was a woman riding
towards our camp. I wonder what she saw as I came to meet her through the
leafy bough gundies. It was nearly two years since she had seen a woman.
It was a merry camp that night - merry and beautiful and picturesque. The
night was very cold and brilliantly starry, as nights usually are in the
Never-Never during the Dry; the camp fires were all around us: dozens of
them, grouped in and out among the gundies, and among the
fires - chatting, gossiping groups of happy-hearted human beings.
Around one central fire sat the lubras, with an outer circle of smaller
fires behind them:
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