As the men exchanged opinions, “Freezers” appeared solitary creatures—­isolated monuments of awe-inspiring goodness and purity, and I felt thankful that circumstances had made me only the Little Missus—­a woman, down with the bushmen at the foot of all pedestals, needing all the love and fellowship she could get, and with no more goodness than she could do with—­just enough to make her worthy of the friendship of “rough chaps like us.”

“Oh well,” said the traveller, when he was ready to start, after finding room in his swag for a couple of books, “I’m not sorry I struck this camp;” but whether because of the cabbage, or the woman, or the books, he did not say.  Let us hope it was because of the woman, and the books, and the cabbage, with the cabbage placed last.

Then with a pull at his hat, and a “good-bye, ma’am, good luck,” the man from Beyanst rode out of the gundy camp, and out of our lives, to become one of its pleasant memories.

The man from Beyanst was our only visitor for the first week, in that camp, and then after that we had some one every day.

Dan went into the homestead for stores, and set the ball rolling by returning at sundown in triumph with a great find:  a lady traveller, the wife of one of the Inland Telegraph masters.  Her husband and little son were with her, but—­well, they were only men.  It was five months since I had seen a white woman, and all I saw at the time was a woman riding towards our camp.  I wonder what she saw as I came to meet her through the leafy bough gundies.  It was nearly two years since she had seen a woman.

It was a merry camp that night—­merry and beautiful and picturesque.  The night was very cold and brilliantly starry, as nights usually are in the Never-Never during the Dry; the camp fires were all around us:  dozens of them, grouped in and out among the gundies, and among the fires—­chatting, gossiping groups of happy-hearted human beings.

Around one central fire sat the lubras, with an outer circle of smaller fires behind them:  one central fire and one fire behind each lubra, for such is the wisdom of the black folk; they warm themselves both back and front.  Within another circle of fires chirruped and gossiped the “boys,” while around an immense glowing heap of logs sat the white folk—­the “big fellow fools” of the party, with scorching faces and freezing backs, too conservative to learn wisdom from their humbler neighbours.

At our fireside we women did most of the talking, and as we sat chatting on every subject under the sun, our husbands looked on in indulgent amusement.  Dan soon wearied of the fleeting conversation and turned in, and the little lad slipped away to the black folk; but late into the night we talked:  late into the night, and all the next day and evening and following morning—­shaded from the brilliant sunshine all day in the leafy “Cottage,” and scorching around the camp fire during the evenings.  And then these travellers, too, passed out of our camp to become, with the man from Beyanst, just pleasant memories.