To
MY MOTHER














Chapter I Chiefly Descriptive



Before you fairly start this story I should like to give you just a
word of warning.

If you imagine you are going to read of model children, with
perhaps; a naughtily inclined one to point a moral, you had better lay
down the book immediately and betake yourself to 'Sandford and Merton'
or similar standard juvenile works. Not one of the seven is really
good, for the very excellent reason that Australian children never are.