and mother, between them, milked the remaining seventeen.

Among the dairying fraternity little toddlers, ere they are big enough to
hold a bucket, learn to milk. Thus their hands become inured to the
motion, and it does not affect them. With us it was different. Being
almost full grown when we started to milk, and then plunging heavily into
the exercise, it had a painful effect upon us. Our hands and arms, as far
as the elbows, swelled, so that our sleep at night was often disturbed by
pain.

Mother made the butter. She had to rise at two and three o'clock in the
morning, in order that it would be cool and firm enough to print for
market.

Jane Haizelip had left us a year previously, and we could afford no one
to take her place. The heavy work told upon my gentle, refined mother.
She grew thin and careworn, and often cross. My father's share of the
work was to break in the wild cows, separate the milk, and take the
butter into town to the grocer's establishment where we obtained our
supplies.

Dick Melvyn of Bruggabrong was not recognizable in Dick Melvyn, dairy
farmer and cocky of Possum Gully. The former had been a man worthy of the
name. The latter was a slave of drink, careless, even dirty and
bedraggled in his personal appearance. He disregarded all manners, and
had become far more plebeian and common than the most miserable specimen
of humanity around him. The support of his family, yet not, its support.
The head of his family, yet failing to fulfil the obligations demanded of
one in that capacity. He seemed to lose all love and interest in his
family, and grew cross and silent, utterly without pride and pluck.