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Updated: May 4, 2025
She might have been a pretty girl once or she might not. Nobody would ever have thought of physical attractiveness as having anything to do with her. Mrs. Macanany was distinctly ugly. Mrs. Phillips was neither ugly nor pretty nor anything else.
She placed a cool damp cloth on the baby's head, wishing that its mother would come up, Mrs. Hobbs having been persuaded to go downstairs for some tea and a rest while Nellie watched by the sick child and having been entangled in household affairs the moment she appeared in the dingy kitchen where Mrs. Macanany, to the neglect of her own home, was "seeing to things."
"She's a union girl, at any rate," hazarded Nellie's timid defender. There was an awkward pause at this. It was an apple of discord with the women, evidently. A tall form turning the corner afforded further reason for changing the subject. "Here's Mrs. Macanany," announced one. "You'd better not say anything against Nellie Lawton when she's about." So they talked again of Mrs.
Macanany trying to comfort her between the pauses of her own vehement neighbourly grief. Nellie closed the dead baby's eyes, set the candle on the shelf and moved to the door where Mr. Hobbs stood bewildered and dumbfoundered, his pipe still in his hand. "Speak to her!" she whispered to him. "It's very hard for her." Mr. Hobbs looked hopelessly at his pipe. He did not recollect where to put it.
"Mrs. Hobbs!" she called, softly but urgently, running to the stairs. The poor woman came hastily to the foot. "Quick, Mrs. Hobbs!" said Nellie, beckoning. "Oh, Mrs. Macanany! The baby's dying!" cried poor Mrs. Hobbs, tripping on her dragging skirts in her frantic haste to get upstairs. Mrs. Macanany followed. The children set up a boohoo that brought Mr.
Macanany's extravagant praises, and agreed entirely with her declaration that if all the women in Sydney would only stand by Nellie, as Mrs. Macanany herself would, there would be such a doing and such an upsetting and such a righting of things that ever after every man would be his own master and every woman would only work eight hours and get well paid for it.
"You're getting very particular all at once, Mrs. Macanany," observed Nellie. "It's a wonder he didn't send for a policeman," commented Mrs. Phillips. "Send for a policeman! And pretty he'd look with the holy bible in his hand repeating what I said to him, wouldn't he now?" enquired Mrs. Macanany, once more placing her great arms on her hips and glaring with her watery eyes at her audience.
You needn't blush, my dear, for I had a young man myself once, though you wouldn't imagine it to look at me. And if I was a young man myself it's her" pointing Nellie out to Mrs. Phillips that I'd go sweethearting with and not with the empty headed chits that " "Look here, Mrs. Macanany!" interrupted Nellie. "You didn't come in to make fun of me." "Making fun!
"Take the baby, dear?" quoth Mrs. Macanany, reappearing from a descent to the kitchen with a six months' infant squalling in her arms. "Give it a drink now! It'll make you feel better." Poor Mrs. Hobbs clutched the baby-in-arms convulsively and sobbed over it, finding some comfort in the exertion. To Mrs.
Macanany and viragoes like her pouring oil on the flames and drumming the weak-kneed up and screaming against "blacklegging" as a thing accurst. And when she understood that the fight was over, while apparently it was waxing thicker, she had waited to see what the end would be, longing for something she knew not what.
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