“So you have had twelve children?” I said.

“Yes,” she replied, laughing fatly, as though it were a joke.

“The boys found a bees’ nest in a tree an’ have been robbin’ it the smornin’,” continued Mrs M’Swat.

“Yes; we have ample exemplification of that,” I responded.  It was honey here and honey there and honey everywhere.  It was one of the many varieties of dirt on the horrible foul-smelling tablecloth.  It was on the floor, the door, the chairs, the children’s heads, and the cups.  Mrs M’Swat remarked contentedly that it always took a couple of days to wear “off of” things.

After “dinner” I asked for a bottle of ink and some paper, and scrawled a few lines to grannie and my mother, merely reporting my safe arrival at my destination.  I determined to take time to collect my thoughts before petitioning for release from Barney’s Gap.

I requested my mistress to show me where I was to sleep, and she conducted me to a fairly respectable little bedroom, of which I was to be sole occupant, unless I felt lonely and would like Rose Jane to sleep with me.  I looked at pretty, soft-eyed, dirty little Rose Jane, and assured her kind-hearted mother I would not be the least lonely, as the sickening despairing loneliness which filled my heart was not of a nature to be cured by having as a bedmate a frowzy wild child.

Upon being left alone I barred my door and threw myself on the bed to cry—­weep wild hot tears that scalded my cheeks, and sobs that shook my whole frame and gave me a violent pain in the head.

Oh, how coarse and grating were the sounds to be heard around me!  Lack, nay, not lack, but utter freedom from the first instincts of cultivation, was to be heard even in the great heavy footfalls and the rasping sharp voices which fell on my ears.  So different had I been listening in a room at Caddagat to my grannie’s brisk pleasant voice, or to my aunt Helen’s low refined accents; and I am such a one to see and feel these differences.

However, I pulled together in a little while, and called myself a fool for crying.  I would write to grannie and mother explaining matters, and I felt sure they would heed me, as they had no idea what the place was like.  I would have only a little while to wait patiently, then I would be among all the pleasures of Caddagat again; and how I would revel in them, more than ever, after a taste of a place like this, for it was worse than I had imagined it could be, even in the nightmares which had haunted me concerning it before leaving Caddagat.

The house was of slabs, unlimed, and with very low iron roof, and having no sign of a tree near it, the heat was unendurable.  It was reflected from the rocks on either side, and concentrated in this spot like an oven, being 122 degrees in the veranda now.  I wondered why M’Swat had built in such a hole, but it appears it was the nearness of the point to water which recommended it to his judgment.