eyes and ran down over his nose like rain off a shingle; then he hitched
up his pants and "wired in" again.

Dave was a philosopher. He worked away until the axe flew off the handle
with a ring and a bound, and might have been lost in the long grass for
ever only Dad stopped it with his shin. I fancy he did n't mean to stop
it when I think how he jumped--it was the only piece of excitement there
had been the whole of that relentlessly solemn fortnight. Dad got
vexed--he was in a hurry with the grubbing--and said he never could get
anything done without something going wrong. Dave was n't sorry the axe
came off--he knew it meant half-an-hour in the shade fixing it on again.
"Anyway," Dad went on, "we'll go to dinner now."

On the way to the house he several times looked at the sky--that cloudless,
burning sky--and said--to no one in particular, "I wish to God it would
rain!" It sounded like an aggravated prayer. Dave did n't speak, and I
don't think Dad expected he would.

Joe was the last to sit down to dinner, and he came in steaming hot. He
had chased out of sight a cow that had poked into the cultivation. Joe
mostly went about with green bushes in his hat, to keep his head cool, and
a few gum-leaves were now sticking in his moist and matted hair.

"I put her out, Dad!" he said, casting an eager glare at everything on the
table. "She tried to jump and got stuck on the fence, and broke it all
down. On'y I could n't get anything, I'd er broke 'er head--there was n't
a thing, on'y dead cornstalks and cow-dung about." Then he lunged his fork
desperately at a blowfly that persistently hovered about his plate, and
commenced.