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SQUEAKING BOOTS.
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them." Her delight on first getting the boots was really pretty to see; she flung her arms round me with joy, the boots squeaking as if in sympathy, but they developed a feature that we had scarcely noticed hitherto, and Binnalian's heels now plainly showed themselves to be of a greater length than those of a white person.

The natives of Western Australia are extremely impressionable to religious instruction, but Binnahan's unquestioning faith did not prevent her from occasionally making very quaint observations on what she was taught. As, for instance, she once asked Rosa what angels had to eat in heaven, and receiving for reply that they eat nothing, rather than the more simple answer that nothing had been revealed on the subject, the removal of one difficulty only paved the way for another, and, in much perplexity, the querist said—"Then are they always gorbel mooràt?" (i.e. stomach-full.) Another time she asked if her dead brothers and sisters were gone to heaven, and being told that all innocent children would be there, she remarked, "Little kangaroo do no harm—little kangaroo go too?"

Not very long after our taking Binnahan there came to the parsonage one day another native child, who announced that she was going to live with us, and followed me about from room to room, as if incapable of comprehending the denial which I was forced to give her. It was a friendless little creature, who did not look more than five years old, and who, having no mother, roamed hither and thither in company sometimes of one, sometimes of another of her relations.

The last time that I saw her was in chilly wet weather,