Mrs. Niven, dyspeptic and dolorous, wakes Niven with her high-pitched tones.
"Is it going to be the same this week? What does it worry you if a woman kills herself at the tub while you snore there all day? Look at Boulder, Bloxham and Bullock bin up half-an-hour, I reckon, runnin' round for their wives. And women come to me and say—'My! Mrs. Niven, you looks very poorly lately,—and I got to say the heat has took me dreadful, but it's runnin' after you, lifting tubs of water, and scratching on a wood-heap for wood that isn't there that done it."
Boulder, Bloxham and Johnson are rising up elsewhere.
Through the morning is great bustle and to-do, a filling of pitchers, a lifting of buckets, a running in and out of the sun to open-air fireplaces, a prodding of clothes in coppers with sticks, wringings, beatings, rinsings, re-wringings. The morning is gone as soon as begun.
By noonday whistle the clothes are spread on line and bush and fallen log; and Mrs. Bullock, Mrs. Niven and Mrs. Boulder, rather short of breath, and distinctly short of speech, are dishing up the dinner a minute or two late. Coming home from the mine it is well to be discreet. Sitting down to lunch at Mrs. Simpson's bush boarding-house I talk very small on these occasions.
The wash dries early at Surprise and by three o'clock Mrs. Bullock, Mrs. Niven and Mrs. Boulder are abroad again plucking the strange things down. When the whistle blows at five o'clock the irons are put by and the heaviest day of the week is over.
On Mondays they wash, and on Mondays by another law, the men go forth in clean clothes. If you are one to notice such things, you can tell the week in the month by the shirts going to work. Mr. Carroll, timekeeper, is especially regular this way. First and third Mondays bring him to the office in blue tie and white trousers with an iron mould in the seat; second and fourth Mondays show him in spotted tie and blue trousers weary at the knees. Simpson, the butcher, clips his moustache every first Sunday in the month, and changes from a man of walrus appearance to a brigand with shabby brown teeth.
But every day of the month the single boot-last of Surprise is in demand, as one or other person sits down with a pair of half-soles from the store to patch his boots against the ill-humours of the stones.
Now and then of a morning, between breakfast wash-up and the midday cooking, Mrs. Bullock, Mrs. Niven and Mrs. Simpson slip across to the store for a packet of this or that, and any news that may be running round. It happens often that luck chooses them the same ten minutes; and Mrs. Boulder and Mrs. Bloxham may be passing by just then. Mr. Wells, storeman, agile and anxious, very quick at a piece of news, very slow at totting up an account, puts hands wide on the counter and gives a brisk "Good morning. Turned dreadful hot, Mrs. Simpson. Looks like summer come at last."