Brook let down the heavy, awkward sliprails, and the gaunt cattle stumbled through, with aggravating deliberation, and scattered slowly among the native apple-trees along the sidling. First there came an old easygoing red poley cow, then a dusty white cow; then two shaggy, half-grown calves -- who seemed already to have lost all interest in existence -- and after them a couple of "babies," sleek, glossy, and cheerful; then three more tired-looking cows, with ragged udders and hollow sides; then a lanky barren heifer -- red, of course -- with half-blind eyes and one crooked horn -- she was noted for her great agility in jumping two-rail fences, and she was known to the selector as "Queen Elizaberth; " and behind her came a young cream-coloured milker -- a mighty proud and contented young mother -- painfully and patiently dragging her first calf, which was hanging obstinately to a teat, with its head beneath her hind legs. Last of all there came the inevitable red steer, who scratched the dust and let a stupid bwoo-ur-r-rr out of him as he snuffed at the rails.
Brook had shifted the rails there often before -- fifteen years ago -- perhaps the selfsame rails, for stringy-bark lasts long; and the action brought the past near to him -- nearer than he wished. He did not like to think of that hungry, wretched selection existence; he felt more contempt than pity for the old-fashioned, unhappy boy, who used to let down the rails there, and drive the cattle through.
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