Arvie started home with his heart and mind pretty full, and a stronger,
stranger aversion to ever going back to the shop again. This new,
unexpected, and unsought-for friendship embarrassed the poor lonely child.
It wasn't welcome.

But he never went back. He got wet going home, and that night
he was a dying child. He had been ill all the time,
and Collins was one "baby" short next day.




The Selector's Daughter



I.

She rode slowly down the steep siding from the main road to a track
in the bed of the Long Gully, the old grey horse picking his way
zig-zag fashion. She was about seventeen, slight in figure,
and had a pretty freckled face with a pathetically drooping mouth,
and big sad brown eyes. She wore a faded print dress,
with an old black riding skirt drawn over it, and her head was hidden
in one of those ugly, old-fashioned white hoods, which, seen from the rear,
always suggest an old woman. She carried several parcels of groceries
strapped to the front of the dilapidated side-saddle.

The track skirted a chain of rocky waterholes at the foot of the gully,
and the girl glanced nervously at these ghastly, evil-looking pools