Blanche Edith Baughan

“ There is only one thing wrong, and that is, that every one of us drinks tea. Delicious, pernicious tea! when shall we of the back-blocks learn to do without you, anyway at dinner? No wonder that Nance has toothache, and patent medicines such a sale!
Dinner done, the harvest-hands take a brief “spell” upon the lounges, while the rest of us clear away, and wash the dishes. Then, back they go to the paddock, Eva this time with them, Mother resumes her mending, and Nance and I proceed to bottle “barm,” Nance enlivening the task with a sketch of the family fortunes. ”

“ We’ve none of us got any brains to spare,” says Nance frankly. “I can’t stand reading dry stuff, anyway; can you? There! that’s the last bottle; thanks! Now shall we go and pick up windfalls in the orchard? I want to make some apple-pies for tea.” ”

“ After the glee, Bruv brought out a violin, Benny a ’cello, and Flo took her father’s place at the piano, and played their accompaniment. Real music it was; the whole family had evidently a natural gift. Nobody spoke, every one was hanging on sweet sound. It was good to look round on all those absorbed faces; it was fine to feel that uplifted ending to a day that, arduous with toil, had nevertheless throughout been made lively with interest and sweet with love. Perhaps they did not actually “live so bad” after all, these individual sons and daughters of the soil? ”

“ They reckon to be done to-night,” says Nance. “Benny’s there, of course, and Bruv and Sandy; Flo and Bonny have been there most of the time, and . . . Hugh is helping.” Nance hesitated a little before that last name, and it seemed to me she blushed ever so slightly, too. If she did, however, Mother took no notice.
“That’s good. And how’s the ducks?” said she.
“There, now!” replies Nance ruefully. “I do wish you hadn’t asked; I was hoping to break it to you gently. All gone, mother! Poor Waddle, all her babies gone! Rats, we think; so we’ve moved Toddle and her little lot. But oh, Mother! ”

“ A green jug upon the table, too, holds a handful of Canterbury bells, purple and white; plump cushions, with bright covers mollify the lounges; there is plenty of light; above all, there is plenty of air, for both windows are open, and another door, opposite to that by which we entered, frames another glimpse of garden-green. ”

“ Art comes at all times scantly to the back-blocks; and with what hope can Literature appeal to brains exhausted already by the exhaustion of the body? While, on the other hand, what have we in the place of these, to exercise our higher faculties, and so give us, in addition to material existence, life? ”

“ The cloth is clean, the set of sun-browned faces round it, shining with health and good humour, is a finer sight than any possible amount of silver on it could be, and the meal itself, though perhaps it might make a conscientious dyspeptic shudder, for the pork is followed by a hot plum-pudding, would likewise almost certainly make his mouth water, for it is excellently cooked. ”

“ The very calves were tame already—far too tame, remarked Flo, as with a milk-pail in one hand and a stout stick in the other she dealt out mercy well-spiced with justice to their eager, jostling little host.
Barely were the calves fed, when down trooped all the harvesters, exultant—the oats were stacked! Tea was the next detail, and after tea Dad agreed that there was really time for an hour’s music before we need start back for town. The boys had all fallen fast asleep upon the living-room lounges, and nobody had the heart to wake them ”

“ But Dad, who was really right inside the dairy, all smothered up in the smoke, shouted out to him, and said, ‘We Must!’ So, he did. I can see poor old Dad’s face now. Oh, I was sorry for him that time; it fair broke him up—if the place had all gone, he’d have died, I do believe. Of course, to us kiddies it didn’t really matter much—we didn’t know enough, for one thing, and for another, as Sandy said, it was such a change! Anyway, you can pretty well always think how much worse things might have been, can’t you? ”

“ We’ve fifty cows in milk, butter keeps up, and there’s talk of building a factory four miles off. And then, if this man that’s after the place now, you know, does take it, we’ll be able to sell out well, and Dad can leave that hateful store.
“Neighbours? No, of course, we haven’t many—nor much time, either, to go and see those that we have; but then, we’re a host in ourselves, aren’t we? and we can all sing, and most of us can play. That’s one thing, though—I do want Eva to get away to town, and have some lessons ”

“ Then, after a satisfactory inspection of affairs in the cooking-shed, Nance takes me up to the oat-paddock. “For, though I am cook this week (Flo and Eva and I take it in turns) ,” she explains, “the dinner’s all on now, and, besides, Mother’s here.” Watch, the old rough-coated dog, comes with us, and on the way there is yellow-haired Custard to be seen, with her six unparalleled pups. From the pigeon-cote above the cart-shed, a flock of snowy fantail pigeons comes circling round our heads, not at all timidly; and Nance says, “You can see they’re pets, too, can’t you? ”

“ Machine still all right?” And, while Nance and I clear away, she establishes herself in a good light with a pile of dilapidated shirts, and a half-made white muslin blouse. “Worst first,” says she, and begins upon the shirts.
The cups washed, Nance proposes that I should see the butter, and takes me over to the dairy-shed, where Eva, a second edition of Flo, though several years older, smiles merrily out at us from behind a great, pale-primrose-coloured hill. ”

“ It may be with healthy young nations as it is with healthy little boys, that the affairs of the soul interest them a very great deal less keenly than the affairs of the stomach—and, for the time being, rightly so. ”

“ The crop is being carried. Benny, and Bonny, his twin-sister, whose flying fleece of yellow hair catches every sunbeam, are helping Flo to rake. Sandy is in charge of the sled, as Dobbin takes it back and forth between the rakers and the rick; while Bruv, the eldest of “the children,” is pitching, with the help of Hugh Miller, a neighbour’s son. As for Dad, he is everywhere, of course. All the lads are well-grown, honest-looking, and natural. ”