"On the Train" by Olga Masters

Upon a local train route somewhere in Australia, an observant passenger hesitantly regards the subtle interplay between a young mother and her two young girls. Whether or not she is right to assume certain things, this passenger can only guess. Read by Scoot.

Pambula, New South Wales, Australia is the birthplace of the writer Olga Masters, who lived from 1919 to 1986 and published four books of award-winning fiction in her lifetime (The Home Girls, where this story originates, Loving Daughters, A Long Time Dying, and Amy's Children) and whose fifth book of stories, Rose Fancier, was published after her death. As one might guess from her titles, she specialized in intimate depictions of mothers and their children and the harsh world--often that of rural Australia--which both exhausted and challenged them. Masters was the mother of seven children herself. The collection Australian Short Stories (complex title, isn't it?), edited by Carmel Bird and published in 1991, is the excellent source of this story and other stories to come from "down under." (Oh, dear, thought you'd get away before hearing that cliche, didn't you?)