Australian Tales - Setis

from a native cherry-tree. The poor girl had been climbing to catch a
locust, and had slipped her footing; but a friendly branch caught her
crinoline, and saved her from bruises of fractures. She was speedily
extricated from her unnatural position; and after receiving a good
“scatting” from her mother for tearing her new frock, she was told to sit
down and not to stir a peg, under certain penalties, which Polly thought
were very arbitrary.
Ere they had recovered from that shock, and before Mr. Knipps could
stimulate his merry mood to return, their boy Billy came into the camp,
covered with mud, and in inconsolable grief at the loss of his new
Christmas cap, which was drifting away to sea, with wind and tide in its
favour. It appeared from Billy's blubbering explanation, that he had
hooked a fine toad-fish, and in his haste to secure the prize, he had fallen
head foremost over the stern of the boat into the mud. Billy's wet clothes
were stripped off instanter; and while he was in that favourable condition
for appreciating correction, his father administered the rod with an
unsparing hand, then delivered him over to his mother, who rolled him in
the baby's blanket, and seated him beside his disconsolate sister,
remarking, in angry tones as she did so, “that no woman in the known
world was ever so tried with children as herself;” being quite forgetful at
the time of the great cause she had for rejoicing that one of her children
had escaped a broken neck, and the other a watery grave. But such
anomalies are of common occurrence, and many a poor child has
received a severe beating from an excited parent, for its good fortune in
escaping a fatal disaster.
The most annoying part of Billy's mishap was, that it necessitated their
returning home at once to get dry clothing for “the young monkey, lest
he should catch his death of cold.” The fragments of the feast were then
hastily tied up in the tablecloth, and the party re-embarked, with
disappointment beclouding each face. Those of my readers who have
experienced the peculiar difficulty of launching a boat from a bed of soft
mud, would have readily sympathised with Mr. Knipps as he pushed first
at the bow, then at the stern, of his stranded boat; and sometimes pushed
himself so deeply into the yielding mud, that he had grave doubts if he
should ever be able to work his way out of it again; in which case his
name would become as unpleasantly familiar in colonial history as the
celebrated cockney “Billy Barlow.”
At length the boat was afloat; but navigating it back to Chickweed
Farm was not so easy as gliding down with the stream to Bandicoot
Brush, for two strong reasons, viz., adverse wind and tide, and the
weakening influence of strong rum on Mr. Knipps's powers of sculling.
The boat was heavy, and the oars were not light, still Mr. Knipps worked
with spirit, sometimes standing up and pushing the oars, sometimes
sitting down and pulling them; now and then lying on his back, after