CHAPTER X
BILLABONG
“Will it be fine, Murty?”
The person addressed made no answer for a moment, continuing to stare at the western horizon with his eyes wrinkled and his face anxious. He turned presently; a tall, grizzled man, with the stooping shoulders and the slightly bowed legs that are the heritage of those who spend nine-tenths of their time in the saddle.
“Sorra a one of me knows,” he said. “It's one of thim unchancy days that might be annything. Have ye looked at the glass?”
“It's mejum,” replied the first speaker. She was a vast woman, with a broad, kindly face, lit by shrewd and twinkling blue eyes, dressed, as was her custom, in a starched blue print, with a snowy apron. “Mejum only. But I don't feel comferable at that there bank of clouds, Murty.”
“I'd not say meself it was good,” admitted Murty O'Toole, head stockman on the Billabong run. He looked again at the doubtful sky, and then back to Mrs. Brown. “Have ye no corns, at all, that 'ud be shootin' on ye if rain was coming?”
“Corns I 'ave, indeed,” said Mrs. Brown, with the sigh of one who admits that she is but human. “But no—they ain't shootin' worth speakin' about, Murty. Nor me rheumatic knee ain't givin' tongue, as Master Jim would say.”
“Yerra, that's all to the good,” said the stockman, much cheered. “I'll not look at the ould sky anny longer—leastways, not till I have that cup of tea ye were speakin' about.”