in the Patagonia Swamp, if it came to the worst. Now we're in for it.
I've got a presentiment that something'll happen before to-morrow night.
Just mark my words."

A constrained silence fell on the grown-up children, till Willoughby
politely sought to restore ease by contributing his quota
to the evening's feast of reason--

"There occurs to my mind a capital thing," he said; "a capital thing, indeed,
though apropos of nothing in particular. A student, returning from a stroll,
encountered a countryman, carrying a hare in his hand. 'Friend,'
said the student quietly, 'is that thine own hare or a wig?' The joke,
of course, lies in the play on the word 'hare'."

Willoughby's courteous effort was worse than wasted,
for the general depression deepened.

"You're right, Thompson," said Cooper, at length. "Mostly everybody's got
a curse on them. I got a curse on me. I got it through swearin'
and Sabbath-breakin'. I've tried to knock off swearin' fifty dozen times,
but I might as well try to fly. Last time I tried to knock it off was when
I left Nyngan for Kenilworth, four months ago; but there happened to be
a two-hundredweight bag o' rice in the bottom o' the load;
an' something tore her, an' she started leakin' through the cracks
in the floor o' the wagon; an' I could n't git at her no road,
for there was seven ton on top of her; an' the blasted stuff
it kep' dribble-dribble till you could 'a' tracked me at a gallop
for over a hundred mile; an' me swearin' at it till I was black in the face;
an' it always stopped dribblin' at night, like as if it was to aggravate a man.
If it had n't been for that rice, I'd 'a' kep' from swearin' that trip;