40 OVER THE SEA.

house for him since mother died, calls it carroty when she is in a temper, which is very
often I am sorry to say, and what I am much vexter for than at her anger is | the fact that
I cannot help believing her verdict instead of my father’s.

Aunt Sarah, father says, was a very nice girl once, before she went home to Tenebne
and got presented to the Queen, which made her so conceited that she snubbed all her best
friends and thus became an old maid ; that’s what spoilt her and made her so disagreeable;
but, as father says, it is the fault with the young colonials nowadays, the boys,smoke
‘cigarettes instead of honest pipes, and the girls dream of being “my lady,” instead of
learning to be as amiable as their mothers were, so that the colonies are fast going to
the dogs—I don’t know, I’m sure, but if all animals were like my dog “ Tarra,” they might
do worse than go to them.

“Tarra,” my dog, is not a common dog any more than I am a common girl—he is what
you might call a self-contained dog, and does not air his opinions or express his feelings to
every one who thinks fit to speak to him at first sight ; indeed, many have gone away, both
quadrupeds and bipeds, under the fixed impression that he was a stupid old collie who had
not a wag of appreciation or humour in him, all the while “Tarra” was sitting solemnly
taking stock of them and their peculiarities, and concocting merry jests at their expense all
to himself, his tail as expressionless as are the eyes of John Cha-Che when father is
questioning him’ about the packet of opium which the postman brings up weekly from
Melbourne. John no “savzes” anything, and when Tarra gives way to the weakness of a
“laugh ” or a wag of the tail it is to put people off their guard, not because he is enjoying
himself.

What I am going to tell you happened just about the end of a very long and dry season,
when the only sign of green to be found in the country side was John Cha-Ghe’s kitchen
garden, which never lost its colour, no matter what the season was. Father and Aunt
Sarah had. driven into Dinilequin to hire fresh servants, as all our old ones had left us in the
lurch ; they often do this in Australia, and are one of our great tribulations in life. While |
they are with us, you have no idea, how often one ‘wishes they could do without servants
nowadays.

The house was empty excepting for “ Tarra” and me, ie all the men had gone to the
outlying runs to look after the sheep, poor things, which were dying by hundreds for want ,
of water and meat, and John Cha-Che was inside his own little hut at the bottom of the
garden. Father gave strict orders to “ Tarra” to look after the station, and although the
old fellow wanted to go with him badly, yet he had too great a sense of his responsibility
to stir from my side at the door as we both stood and watched them drive away, along by
the dried-up Billabong, through the gum-trees, until they seemed to disappear in a cloud of
grey dust behind the mirage which the dry weather always produces in these parts.

Perhaps you will not believe it, but we have mirages on the Riverina as distinctly as
they could have in the desert. You look round the country on a very dry day, when the
sky is all clouded overhead and no sunshine can get through, and there they seem to be, clear
lakes of glittering white water with the gum-trunks'starting out of them, just a little distance
away, and yet all the time the poor sheep are lying about gasping with hunger and thirst.