Henry Lawson

“ I’m a honest, respictable married woman, and so is me sister-in-law, Mary Donelly; and to think!—Git out of me door!” and she caught up the billy of coffee. “Git outside me door, or I’ll let ye have it in ye’r ugly face, ye low woolscourer—an’ it’s nearly bilin’.”
Old Jack stumbled dazedly out, and blind instinct got him on to the coach as the safest place. Harry Chatswood had stood with his long, gaunt figure hung by an elbow to the high mantelshelf, all the time, taking alternate gulps from his pint of coffee and puffs from his pipe, and very calmly and restfully regarding the scene. ”

“ She sat down on a stool by the fire, and presently, after thinking over it a bit, two big, lonely tears rolled down the lonely woman’s fair, fat, blonde cheeks in the firelight.
“An’ to think of Old Jack,” she said. “The very last man in the world I’d dreamed of turning on me. But—but I always thought Old Jack was goin’ a bit ratty, an’ maybe I was a bit hard on him. God forgive us all!”
Had Harry Chatswood seen her then he would have been sorry he did it. Swagmen and broken-hearted new chums had met worse women than Mother Mac. ”

“ Ye’re coffee’s gittin’ cowld, an’ it’s eighteenpence each to passengers I charge on a night like this; Harry Chatswood’s the driver an’ welcome, an’ Ould Jack’s an ould friend.” And she flounced round to clatter her feelings amongst the crockery on the dresser—just as men make a great show of filling and lighting their pipes in the middle of a barney. ”

“ But she pulled herself together, got up and bustled round. She put on more wood, swept the hearth, put a parcel of fresh steak and sausages—brought by the coach—on to a clean plate on the table, and got some potatoes into a dish ”