'I wish you were going with some one else,' she said with an air of vexation. 'It's strange that that Stoate should come, just on your last evening at home. I don't like him a little bit. He's just artful enough to persuade you men that he's going to do something great with this "Australian Shearers' Union" that I see so much about in the newspapers. I don't believe in him, and so I tell you, Bill!'

'I know you don't like Unions,' he answered, 'but see what they've done for the working classes! What could we shearers have done without ours?'

'Just what you did before you had anything to do with him and his Union. Do your work and get paid for it. You got your shearing money all right, didn't you? Mr. Templemore's cheques, and Mr. Dickson's and Mr. Shand's, were always paid, weren't they? How should we have got the land and this home, but for them?'

'Well, but, Jenny, we ought to think about the other workers as well as ourselves—"Every man should stand by his order," as Stoate says.'

'I don't see that at all. Charity's all very well, but we have our own business to look after and let other people mind theirs. Order, indeed! I call it disorder,—and them that work it up will have to pay for it, mark my words. You look at those children, William Hardwick, that's where you've got to give your money to, and your wife, and not a lot of gassing spouters like Janus Stoate, who don't care if their families starve, while they're drinking and smoking, talking rubbish, and thinking themselves fine fellows, and what fools you and the rest are to pay them for it.'

'Well, but the squatters are lowering the price of shearing, Jenny; we must make a stand against that, surely!'

'And suppose they do. Isn't wool falling, and sheep too? Aren't they boiling down their ewes, and selling legs of mutton for a shilling apiece? Why should they go on paying a pound a hundred when everything's down? When prices rise, shearing'll go up again, and wages too—you know we can get mutton now for a penny a pound. Doesn't that make a difference? You men seem to have no sense in you, to talk in that way!'

'Well, but what are we to do? If they go on cutting down wages, there's no saying what they'll do next.'

'Time enough to think about that when it comes. You take a fair thing, now that times are bad, it'll help them that's helped you, and when they get better, shearing and everything else will go up too. You can't get big wages out of small profits; your friends don't seem to have gumption enough to see that. I'm ashamed of you, I really am, Bill!'

'Well, I must go now—I daresay the squatters will give in, and there'll be no row at all.'