I'm glad to get up at dawn and see to the beasts.

And there's that infernal watching of the sky--looking out all the time for clouds that don't come--or if they do, end in nothing.

You know that brassy glare of the sun rising that means always scorching dry heat?
Think of it a hundred times worse than you've ever seen it! The country as far as you can look is like the floor of an enormous oven, with the sky, red and white-hot for a roof, and all the life there is, being slowly baked inside.

The birds are getting scarce, and it seems too much trouble for those that are about to lift their voices.

Except for a fiend of a laughing-jackass in a gum tree close by the veranda that drives me mad with his devilish chuckling.
Well, how do you think now, that her ladyship would have stood up against these sort of conditions?
Many a time, walking up and down the veranda when I couldn't sleep, I've thanked my stars that there was no woman hanging on to me any more.