'That Irish girl would tear hair like a mountain cat,' continued Mike serenely.
'You're wrong, Mike, quite wrong,' said Jim impressively. 'This girl is—well, absolutely different.'
Done found the trip to Boobyalla very much longer than he had expected, but the mates reached the homestead at about two o'clock. The place was almost deserted. Two or three wolfish cattle-dogs ran from the huts, and barked at them in a half hearted kind of way; a black boy shouted from the shed, and two gins came to the kitchen door, watching them. On the shady side of the same structure a dilapidated, miserable-looking white man of about fifty lay in a drunken sleep, buzzed over by a swarm of flies. The dwelling-house was a wandering weather-board structure with shingle roofs and iron chimneys; a deep veranda, partly latticed, ran round three sides, and ebullient creepers of many kinds swarmed over the house at their own wild will. The homestead faced into a big garden spreading into an orchard, now green and gay with the verdancy and the blooms of spring.
'Didn't I tell you? Not a white man round but the motherless drunk there,' said Mike.
One of the cattle-dogs had returned to the side of the sleeper, and employed himself snapping at the greedy flies, yapping impatiently to keep them from the man's face.
'No boss sit down there, Mary?' said Mike, addressing the eider of the gins.
The aborigine grinned cheerfully. 'Boss him bin gone sit down longa Porkpine,' she said. 'Missus ride by Longabenna. Bill dam drunk, White feller all gone make it hole, catch plenty gold. Gib it 'bacca!'
Burton threw his half-plug of tobacco to the gin; she caught it deftly, the second one snatched, and the two set up a shrill yabbering, like excited monkeys.
'Miss Woodrow?' said Jim interrogatively.
'Teachy missie longa garden,' answered the gin, with illustrative pantomime.