"`Don't throw up dust! -- Stop throwing up dust! --
Do you want to smother 'em? -- Don't throw up so much water! --
Only throw up a pannikin at a time! -- D'yer want to drown 'em?
Bang! Keep on banging, Joe! -- Look at that child! Run, someone! -- run!
you, Jack! -- D'yer want the child to be stung to death? --
Take her inside! . . . Dy' hear me? . . . Stop throwing up dust, Tom!
(To father.) You're scaring 'em away! Can't you see they want to settle?'
[Father was getting mad and yelping: `For Godsake shettup and go inside.']
`Throw up water, Jack! Throw up -- Tom! Take that bucket from him
and don't make such a fool of yourself before the children!
Throw up water! Throw -- keep on banging, children! Keep on banging!'
[Mother put her faith in banging.] `There! -- they're off! You've lost 'em!
I knew you would! I told yer -- keep on bang--!'

"A bee struck her in the eye, and she grabbed at it!

"Mother went home -- and inside.

"Father was good at bees -- could manage them like sheep when he got to know
their ideas. When the swarm settled, he sent us for the old washing stool,
boxes, bags, and so on; and the whole time he was fixing the bees
I noticed that whenever his back was turned to us his shoulders would jerk up
as if he was cold, and he seemed to shudder from inside, and now and then
I'd hear a grunting sort of whimper like a boy that was just starting
to blubber. But father wasn't weeping, and bees weren't stinging him;
it was the bee that stung mother that was tickling father. When he went
into the house, mother's other eye had bunged for sympathy. Father was always
gentle and kind in sickness, and he bathed mother's eyes and rubbed mud on,
but every now and then he'd catch inside, and jerk and shudder,
and grunt and cough. Mother got wild, but presently the humour of it