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There's no doubt 'twas a jedgement on her. As for Rose, no doubt the god of the widow and fatherless will purvide for her." In spite of his disgust, Telford could not repress a smile at the tone, half-whine, half-snuffle, with which Galletly ended up. "I think I had better call and see this Mrs. Palmer," he said slowly. "'Twould be no airthly use, Mr. Telford.
He made several calls at various houses along the river during the forenoon. After dinner he suddenly turned his horse towards the Palmer place. Isaac Galletly, comfortably curled up in a neighbour's chimney corner, saw him drive past. "Ef the minister ain't goin' to Palmers' after all!" he chuckled. "He's a set one when he does take a notion. Well, I warned him what to expect.
Telford checked his horse reluctantly and Galletly crawled into the cutter. He was that most despicable of created beings, a male gossip, and he spent most of his time travelling from house to house in the village, smoking his pipe in neighbourly kitchens and fanning into an active blaze all the smouldering feuds of the place.
Later on I got some good timber mostly scraps that were given to me and made a light body for a spring-cart. Galletly, the coach-builder at Cudgeegong, had got a dozen pairs of American hickory wheels up from Sydney, for light spring-carts, and he let me have a pair for cost price and carriage. I got him to iron the cart, and he put it through the paint-shop for nothing.
If you only wanted to drive one horse you could take out the pole and put in the shafts, and there you were. There was a tilt over the front seat; if you only wanted the buggy to carry two, you could fold down the back seat, and there you had a handsome, roomy, single buggy. It would go near fifty pounds. While I was looking at it, Bill Galletly came in, and slapped me on the back.
Some of our ministers has tried to visit her. They didn't try it more than once. The last one he was about your heft he got a scare, I tell you. Min just caught him by the shoulder and shook him like a rat! Didn't see it myself but Mrs. Rawlings did. Ye ought to hear her describin' of it." Galletly chuckled over the recollection, his wicked little eyes glistening with delight.
Galletly squinted out of the corner of his eye to see if the minister would open on the trail of this hint. Telford's passive face was discouraging but Galletly was not to be baffled. "I s'pose ye haven't heard about the row down at Palmers' last night?" "No." The monosyllable was curt. Telford was vainly seeking to nip Galletly's gossip in the bud.
And her cheeks were getting thin, and her colour was going: I thought of the gaunt, brick-brown, saw-file voiced, hopeless and spiritless Bushwomen I knew and some of them not much older than Mary. When I went back down into the town, I had a drink with Bill Galletly at the Royal, and that settled the buggy; then Bob shouted,* and I took the harness. Then I shouted, to wet the bargain.
I ought to know, perhaps, if I am to be of any service but I have no wish to hear idle gossip." His concluding sentence was quite unheeded by Galletly. "Min Palmer's the worst woman in Rykman's Corner or out of it. She always was an odd one. I mind her when she was a girl a saucy, black-eyed baggage she was! Handsome, some folks called her. I never c'd see it.
Now he was fated to have the whole budget of some vulgar quarrel forced on him by Galletly. "No? Everyone's talkin' of it. The long and short of it is that Min Palmer has had a regular up-and-down row with Rose Fuller and turned her and her little gal out of doors. I believe the two women had an awful time. Min's a Tartar when her temper's up and that's pretty often.
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