Miles Franklin

“ It's as tame as a clucking hen. Fancy a cove sitting down every morning and evening pulling at a cow's tits fit to bust himself, and then turning an old separator, and washing it up in a dish of water like a blooming girl's work. ”

“ It was no good growing anything, because every one grew so much that there was no market, and the sheep died of foot-rot and you couldn't give your butter away, and it is not much worse to have nothing to sell than not he able to sell a thing when you have it. ”

“ After she gets your letters she does jaw, and wishes she never had a child, and what a good mother she is, and what bad devils we are to her. You are a fool not to stay where you are. I wish I could get away to M'Swat or Mack Pot, and I would jump at the chance like a good un. ”

“ They told me it was no use of me trying to tell them fibs. No one would give a woman anything to sine, not even one pound. Why, Susie Duffy was the best singer on the Murrumbidgee, and she would sing for any one who asked her, and free of charge. ”

“ And if you go to a picnic, just when the fun commences you have to nick off home and milk, and when you tog yourself on Sunday evening you have to undress again and lay into the milking, and then you have to change everything on you and have a bath, or your best girl would scent the cow-yard on you, and not have you within cooee of her. ”

“ Mrs M'Swat admonished me for showing the children low pictures.
"She must be a very bold woman," said Jimmy; and Lizer pronounced her mad because, as she put it, "It's a wonder she'd be half-undressed in her photo; you'd think she oughter dress herself up complete then."
Lizer certainly acted upon this principle, as a photo of her, which had been taken by a travelling artist, bore evidence that for the occasion she had arrayed herself in two pairs of ill-fitting cuffs, Peter's watch and chain, strings, jackets, flowers, and other gewgaws galore.
"There ain't no such person as Madame Melber ”