THE class-room was hot, and outside the sun was hard on the dusty earth and the grass was going brown on the playing fields. The boy looked at his exercise book, at the figures and the red-pencil corrections, and they were nothing, related nothing in his experience. He raised his eyes very slowly and saw the hard light and the bare ground and the drying grass. Over by the fence the two old jarrahs with the spread tops framed the piled houses of the suburbs. He had his hands to his head and he looked out of the low window and then back at the figures on the paper, and slowly the tears began to force their way on him. He made no sound and the others working did not know.
Now out beyond him were the wide flat acres of wheat, heavy in ear, and the cut patches bare to the earth dotted with the stooks. The wagon moved slowly out, and when they reached the stooks his father began to pitch the hay. The sheaves thumped on the wagon. He helped Ted, who worked for them, to build the load. As the wagon started for the next stook he felt the jolt and looked at the load to see if it would hold. High up he sat when it was built and they drove in to the stack. He got on the stack and Ted threw the sheaves to him and he passed to his father. The sun was hard on the paddocks and the dull scrub and the few trees. It made the wagon hot and the hay held a heat, and his clothes were hot. It was hard to say when the shadows first started to come on the ground, but they began to shift out from the stooks and from the stack and about the few shade-trees. When they were tired with the mid-afternoon he saw his mother coming out with the tea. They sat in the shade of the wagon and he listened to the talk and he knew the people and the wheat and the town and the bulk bin and when he said something they listened and answered. The colours began to change slowly, to deepen, and shift from the