thatched with tussock-grass, an’ a-standin’ nigh on to the water’s edge.
“‘Cowsheds, I see,’ says mother, as they carried us out o’ the boat, ‘but where do the poor things feed?’ Poor mother! when they told her all the cows there was in Rakau could go through her weddin’-ring, an’ the furthest house was ours, she just up an’ dropped herself down upon a lump o’ wet seaweed, an’ burst out a-cryin’.
“It was hard on mother, mind you! In them days it was just about as bad as dyin’, in one way, to come out to the Colonies. For you left all your friends behind you, an’ you knew you could never get back no more for to see ’em; leastways, people like mother couldn’t. That was why it was best all to come in a family, when you could, fathers an’ mothers, an’ brothers an’ sisters, an’ the little children—all together, an’ all a-lookin’ the same way. But mother, there she’d a-left her own dear mother behind her, an’ she’d been livin’ in a nice three-storied house down Bermondsey way, with butcher and baker just round the corner, an’ chimney-sweeps, an’ newsboys an’ all, up an’ down the street—haven’t she ’minded me about it, often and often? An’ now here she was, come out to live in a one-roomed hut at this God-forsaken last end o’ nowhere, right the other side the world; an’ no way out o’ the mess but to go straight through with it. Yes, there she sat an’ cried, nor I don’t wonder at it—no more I don’t; an’ couldn’t be got even to look towards our hut, much less to go into it, whatever poor father could do; an’ I sat there with her, while they got the chests and things out of the boat, an’ cried too, for company, at first; only
