CHAPTER 8.
Lady Bridget McKeith had been married about a year and a quarter.
Winter was now merging into spring.

But it was not a bounteous spring.
That drear spectre of drought hung over the Never-Never Land.
Lady Bridget stood by the railing of the veranda at Moongarr, looking out for two expected arrivals at the head-station--that of her husband, who had been camping out after cattle--and of the mailman--colloquially, Harry the Blower--who this week was to bring an English mail.
Perhaps the last arrival seemed to her at the moment most important of the two.

The bush wife had long since begun to feel a sort of home sickness for English news.

Yet, had you asked her, she would have told you that barbarism still had a greater hold than civilisation.
There did not, however, appear to be much of the barbarian about Lady Bridget.

She still looked like an old picture in the high-waisted tea-gown of limp yellow silk that she had put on early for dinner, and she still trailed wisps of old lace round her slender shoulders.