They raced down the creek to Spicer’s, and were just in time to save the wheat. She had her sleeves tucked up, and was beating out the burning grass with a bough. She’d been at it for an hour, and was as black as a gin, they said. She only said when they’d turned the fire: ‘Thenk yer! Wait an’ I’ll make some tea.’
After tea the first Sunday she came to see us, Mary asked—
‘Don’t you feel lonely, Mrs Spicer, when your husband goes away?’
‘Well—no, Mrs Wilson,’ she said in the groping sort of voice. ‘I uster, once. I remember, when we lived on the Cudgeegong river—we lived in a brick house then—the first time Spicer had to go away from home I nearly fretted my eyes out. And he was only goin’ shearin’ for a month. I muster bin a fool; but then we were only jist married a little while. He’s been away drovin’ in Queenslan’ as long as eighteen months at a time since then. But’ (her voice seemed to grope in the dark more than ever) ‘I don’t mind,—I somehow seem to have got past carin’. Besides—besides, Spicer was a very different man then to what he is now. He’s got so moody and gloomy at home, he hardly ever speaks.’
Mary sat silent for a minute thinking. Then Mrs Spicer roused herself—
‘Oh, I don’t know what I’m talkin’ about! You mustn’t take any notice of me, Mrs Wilson,—I don’t often go on like this. I do believe I’m gittin’ a bit ratty at times. It must be the heat and the dulness.’
But once or twice afterwards she referred to a time ‘when Spicer was a different man to what he was now.’
I walked home with her a piece along the creek. She said nothing for a long time, and seemed to be thinking in a puzzled way. Then she said suddenly—
‘What-did-you-bring-her-here-for? She’s only a girl.’