thought the boys exultantly

  This, thought the boys exultantly, was life. Not one of them yearned for New Zealand; when the flies clustered like syrup in the corners of their eyes, up their noses, in their mouths and ears, they learned the Australian trick and hung corks bobbing from the ends of strings all around the brims of their hats. To prevent crawlies from getting up inside the legs of (heir baggy trousers they tied strips of kangaroo hide called bowyangs below their knees, giggling at the silly-sounding name, but awed by the necessity. New Zealand was tame compared to this; this was life. Tied to the house and its immediate environs, the women found life much less to their liking, for they had not the leisure or the excuse to ride, nor did they have the stimulation of varying activities. It was just harder to do what women always did: cook, clean, wash, iron, . 98 care for babies. They battled the heat, the dust, the flies, the many steps, the muddy water, the nearly perennial absence of men to carry and chop wood, pump water, kill fowls. The heat especially was hard to bear, and it was as yet only early spring; even so, the thermometer out on the shady veranda reached a hundred degrees every day. Inside the kitchen with the range going, it was a hundred and twenty degrees.
  Their many layers of clothing were close-fitting and designed for New Zealand, where inside the house it was almost always cool. Mary Carson, exercising gently by walking down to see her sister-in-law, looked at Fee's high-necked, floor-length calico gown superciliously. She herself was clad in the new fashion, a cream silk dress coming only halfway down her calves, with loose elbow sleeves, no waist and a low décolletage. "Really, Fiona, you're hopelessly old-fashioned," she said, glancing round the parlor with its fresh coat of cream paint, the Persian carpets and the spindly priceless furniture.
  "I have no time to be anything else," Fee said, curtly for her when acting as hostess.
  "You'll have more time now, with the men away so much and fewer meals to get. Raise your hems and stop wearing petticoats and stays, or you'll die when summer comes. It can get fifteen to twenty degrees hotter than this, you know." Her eyes dwelled on the portrait of the beautiful blond woman in her Empress Eugenie crinoline. "Who's that?" she asked, pointing. "My grandmother."
  "Oh, really? And the furniture, the carpets?" "Mine, from my grandmother."
  "Oh, really? My dear Fiona, you've come down in the world, haven't you?" Fee never lost her temper, so she didn't now, but her thin lips got thinner. "I don't think so, Mary. I have a good man; you ought to know that." "But penniless. What was your maiden name?"
  "Armstrong."
  "Oh, really? Not the Roderick Armstrong Armstrongs?" "He's my oldest brother. His namesake was my great-grandfather." Mary Carson rose, flapping her picture hat at the flies, which were not respecters of person. "Well, you're better born than the Clearys are, even if I do say so myself. Did you love Paddy enough to give all that up?" "My reasons for what I do," said Fee levelly, "are my business, Mary, not yours. I do not discuss my husband, even with his sister."
  The lines on either side of Mary Carson's nose got deeper, her eyes bulged slightly. "Hoity-toity!"
  She did not come again, but Mrs. Smith, her housekeeper, came often, and repeated Mary Carson's advice about their clothes. "Look," she said, "there's a sewing machine in my quarters which I never use. I'll have a couple of the rouseabouts carry it down. If I do need to use it, I'll come down here." Her eyes strayed to baby Hal, rolling on the floor gleefully. "I like to hear the sound of children, Mrs. Cleary."
  Once every six weeks the mail came by horse-drawn dray from Gillanbone; this was the only contact with the outside world. Drogheda possessed a Ford truck, another specially constructed Ford truck with a water tank on its tray, a model-T Ford car and a Rolls-Royce limousine, but no one ever seemed to use them to go into Gilly save Mary Carson infrequently. Forty miles was as far as the moon.