Frank put the money into her hand, but returned the veil. This action seemed not quite to satisfy her; either she did not comprehend what he meant, or it hurt her self-pride, for she said quickly:
"I havn't only green veils—p'raps you'd like some candles better—I makes them too."
"YOU make them?" said Frank, laughing as he glanced at the little hands that were still holding the veil for his acceptance. "YOU make them? Your mother makes the candles, you mean."
"I have no mother now," said she, with an expression of real melancholy in her countenance and voice. "I makes the candles and the veils, and the diggers they buys them of me, cos grandfather's ill, and got nobody to work for him but me."
"Where do you and your grandfather live?" I asked. "In there?" pointing to the blanket tent.
She nodded her head, adding in a lower tone:
"He's asleep now. He sleeps more than he did. He's killed hisself digging for the gold, and he never got none, and he says 'he'll dig till he dies.'"
"Dig till he dies." Fit motto of many a disappointed gold-seeker, the finale of many a broken up, desolated home, the last dying words of many a husband, far away from wife or kindred, with no loved ones near to soothe his departing moments—no better burial—place than the very hole, perchance, in which his last earthly labours were spent. These were some of the thoughts that rapidly chased one another in my mind as the sad words and still sadder tone fell upon my ear.
I was roused by hearing Frank's voice in inquiry as to how she made her candles, and she answered all our questions with a child-like NAIVETE, peculiarly her own. She told us how she boiled down the fat—how once it had caught fire and burnt her severely, and there was the scar still showing on her brown little arm—then how she poured the hot fat into, the tin mould, first fastening in the wicks, then shut up the mould and left it to grow cold as quickly as it would; all this, and many other particulars which I have long since forgotten, she told us; and little by little we learnt too her own history.
Father, mother, grandfather, and herself had all come to the diggings the summer before. Her father met with a severe accident in digging, and returned to Melbourne. He returned only to die, and his wife soon followed him to the grave. Having no other friend or relative in the colonies, the child had been left with her aged grandfather, who appeared as infatuated with the gold-fields as a more hale and younger man. His strength and health were rapidly failing, yet he still dug on. "We shall be rich, and Jessie a fine lady before I die," was ever his promise to her, and that at times when they were almost wanting food.