Cirrus@Austlit

This extract forms a part of Bruce's school story wherein the boarders share a secretive midnight supper. Nita, who is deemed 'good at physiology' advises Helen on how to dissect a 'large cold fowl'. The girls share meringues and eclairs and compare their ease of life with the trials of the grandmothers, who were required to cook in a 'colonial oven', 'make all of the family clothes - by hand, if you please...!', run the house (without a maid), 'doctor her own family' and 'take the odd turn at harvesting, or bush-fire fighting, or cattle-mustering, or...[fighting] off the blacks'.