a place that was standing close up against other humpies in a sort of yard.  There were four little rooms unceiled and Lizzie and I slept together in a sort of shelf bedstead, with two little sisters sleeping on the floor beside us.  When it was cold we used to take them in with us and heap their bedclothes on top of us.  The wind came through the walls everywhere.  Out in the bush one doesn’t mind that but in town, where you’re cooped up all day, it doesn’t seem the same thing.  We had plenty of bread and meat and tea generally but the children didn’t seem to thrive and got so thin and pale-looking that I thought they were going to be ill.  Lizzie’s father used to come home, after tramping about for work, looking as tired as my father did after his long day in the fields and her mother fretted and worried and you could see things getting shabbier and shabbier every week.  I don’t know what I should have done only Lizzie and I now and then got a dress to make for a neighbour or some sewing to do, night-times.  Lizzie’s mother had a machine and we used that and they always made me keep my half of what we got that way, no matter how hard up they were.  They never thought of asking for interest for the use of the machine.  And all the while I was looking for Mary.

“I used to stand watching as the troops of girls went by to work and from work, morning and evening, going to a new place every day so that I shouldn’t miss her and in the dinner hours I used to go round the work rooms to see if she worked in one of them or if anybody knew her.  At first, when I had a shilling to spare, I put an advertisement that she would understand in the paper, but I gave that up soon.  I never dreamed of going to the police station, any more than we had dreamed of it in Toowoomba.  I just looked and looked but I couldn’t find her.

“I shall never forget the first time I got out of work.  One Saturday, without a minute’s warning, a lot of us were told that we wouldn’t be wanted for a week or two.  Lizzie and I were both told.  She could hardly keep herself from crying but I couldn’t cry.  I was too wretched.  I thought of everything and there seemed nothing to do anywhere.  At home they couldn’t help me.  I shrank from asking aunt, for she’d only offered to help me to come back and what could I do in Toowoomba if I got there?  And how could I find Mary?  I had only ten shillings in the world and I owed it all for my board.  I got to imagining where I should sleep and how long I could go without dying of hunger and I hated so to go into the house with Lizzie to tell them.  Lizzie’s mother cried when she heard it and Lizzie cried, but I went into the bedroom when I’d put my money on the table and began to put my things in my box.  They called me to dinner and when I didn’t come and they found out that I meant to go because I couldn’t pay any more they were so angry.  Lizzie’s mother wanted to know if they looked altogether like heathens and then we three cried like babies and I felt better.  I used to cry a good deal in those days, I think.