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striped football jersey, on the upper part of their sweating brown bodies.

As each sheep was shorn the shearer stepped across “the board,” pushed open the door of the pen—kept full by the sheep-os—and hauling out another animal from within, threw the clumsily matted beast on its back. Then the comb and cutter, guided by an expert hand, moved swiftly under the wool; and within an extraordinarily short space of time the whole fleece lay on the greasy floor, and a slim, creamily shining creature—bewildered at the sudden and drastic beauty treatment—was on its four legs once more, being hustled through the trap-door out into the counting pen in the yards beyond.

The fleece-os—two grinning Maori girls in colored cotton dresses—were kept busy gathering up the dirty fleeces and throwing them on the classing table; while the shed hands—two more girls with brooms—were hard at work sweeping “the board” clear of dirty matted ends of wool which were not to go into the press.

A fat smiling Maori woman stood at the classing table. She felt the staple of each fleece, and then threw them one by one into different bins, according to grade and quality. Two men at the iron-framed wool press took the fleeces from the bins, and rammed them into jute bales which, when tightly pressed, would be sewn up and rolled over to an adjoining shed, to be stenciled with the station mark.

Ann thought the inside of the shed was interesting, but she liked the yards better; and later, when armed with a leafy willow branch she was instructed to keep the sheep moving towards the race, she found she was quite enjoying herself. This was the sort of life she’d