They found plenty, however, to talk about in their immediate surroundings.

Perhaps it was the effort to throw off the load on her heart that made Bridget gaily confiding.

She drew humorous pictures of the comic shifts, the almost tragic hardships of life on the Leura--how she had been left servantless--until Ninnis had got up Maggie from the Lower Leura--when the Chinamen decamped during the gold rush.

She described the chivalrous SUNDOWNER who had on one occasion helped her through a week's washing; and Zack Duppo the horsebreaker, whose Christmas pudding had been a culinary triumph, and the loyalty of faithful Wombo, who had done violence to all his savage instincts in acting as house-servant until the advent of the Malay boy Kuppi.

She told of her first experience of a summer out West.