"
"Now, now, Mrs Mac, between friends, I meant no offence; but it's a
cold night, and I thought you might keep a bottle for medicine--or in
case of accident--or snake-bite, you know--they mostly do in the
bush."
"Medicine! And phwat should we want with medicine? This isn't a
five-guinea private hospital. We're clean, healthy people, I'd have
ye know. There's a bottle of painkiller, if that's what ye want, and
a packet of salts left--maybe they'd do ye some good. An' a bottle of
eye-water, an' something to put in your ear for th' earache--maybe
ye'll want 'em both before ye go much farther."
"But, Mrs Mac--"
"No, no more of it!" she said. "I tell ye that if it's a nip ye're
afther, ye'll have to go on fourteen miles to the pub in the town.
Ye're coffee's gittin' cowld, an' it's eighteenpence each to
passengers I charge on a night like this; Harry Chatswood's the driver
an' welcome, an' Ould Jack's an ould friend." And she flounced round
to clatter her feelings amongst the crockery on the dresser--just as
men make a great show of filling and lighting their pipes in the
middle of a barney. The table, by the way, was set on a brown holland
cloth, with the brightest of tin plates for cold meals, and the
brightest of tin pint-pots for the coffee (the crockery was in reserve
for hot meals and special local occasions) and at one side of the wide
fire-place hung an old-fashioned fountain, while in the other stood a
camp-oven; and billies and a black kerosene-tin hung evermore over the
fire from sooty chains.
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