Chapter XXIII.

The Agricultural Reporter.

It had been a dull, miserable day, and a cold westerly was blowing. Dave and Joe were at the barn finishing up for the day.

Dad was inside grunting and groaning with toothache. He had had it a week, and was nearly mad. For a while he sat by the fire, prodding the tooth with his pocket-knife; then he covered his jaw with his hand and went out and walked about the yard.

Joe asked him if he had seen Nell's foal anywhere that day. He did n't answer.

"Did y' see the brown foal any place ter-day, Dad?"

"Damn the brown foal!"—and Dad went inside again.

He walked round and round the table and in and out the back room till Mother nearly cried with pity.

"Is n't it any easier at all, Father?" she said commiseratingly.

"How the devil can it be easier?...Oh-h!"

The kangaroo-dog had coiled himself snugly on a bag before the fire. Dad kicked him savagely and told him to get out. The dog slunk sulkily to the door, his tail between his legs, and his back humped as if expecting another kick. He got it. Dad sat in the ashes then, and groaned lamentably. The dog walked in at the back door and dropped on the bag again.

Joe came in to say that "Two coves out there wants somethink."

Dad paid no attention.

The two "coves"—a pressman, in new leggings, and Canty, the storekeeper—came in. Mother brought a light. Dad moaned, but did n't look up.

"Well, Mr. Rudd," the pressman commenced (he was young and fresh-looking), "I'm from the (something-or-other) office. I'm—er—after information about the crops round here. I suppose—er——"

"Oh-h-h!" Dad groaned, opening his mouth over the fire, and pressing the tooth hard with his thumb.

The pressman stared at him for awhile; then grinned at the storekeeper, and made a derisive face at Dad's back. Then—"What have you got in this season, Mr. Rudd? Wheat?"

"I don't know....Oh-h—it's awful!"

Another silence.

"Did n't think toothache so bad as THAT," said the man of news, airily, addressing Mother. "Never had it much myself, you see!"

He looked at Dad again; then winked slyly at Canty, and said to Dad, in an altered tone: "Whisky's a good thing for it, old man, if you've got any."

Nothing but a groan came from Dad, but Mother shook her head sadly in the negative.

"Any oil of tar?"

Mother brightened up. "There's a little oil in the house," she said, "but I don't know if we've any tar. Is there, Joe—in that old drum?"

"Nurh."

The Press looked out the window. Dad commenced to butcher his gums with the pocket-knife, and threatened to put the fire out with blood and saliva.

"Let's have a look at the tooth, old man," the pressman said, approaching Dad.

Dad submitted.

"Pooh!—I'll take that out in one act!"...To Joe—"Got a good strong piece of string?"

Joe could n't find a piece of string, but produced a kangaroo-tail sinew that had been tied round a calf's neck.

The pressman was enthusiastic. He buzzed about and talked dentistry in a most learned manner. Then he had another squint at Dad's tooth.

"Sit on the floor here," he said, "and I won't be a second. You'll feel next to no pain."

Dad complied like a lamb.

"Hold the light down here, missis—a little lower. You gentlemen" (to Canty and Dave) "look after his legs and arms. Now, let your head come back—right back, and open your mouth—wide as you can." Dad obeyed, groaning the whole time. It was a bottom-tooth, and the dentist stood behind Dad and bent over him to fasten the sinew round it. Then, twisting it on his wrist, he began to "hang on" with both hands. Dad struggled and groaned—then broke into a bellow and roared like a wild beast. But the dentist only said, "Keep him down!" and the others kept him down.

Dad's neck was stretching like a gander's, and it looked as if his head would come off. The dentist threw his shoulders into it like a crack oarsman—there was a crack, a rip, a tear, and, like a young tree leaving the ground, two huge, ugly old teeth left Dad's jaw on the end of that sinew.

"Holy!" cried the dentist, surprised, and we stared. Little Bill made for the teeth; so did Joe, and there was a fight under the table.

Dad sat in a lump on the floor propping himself up with his hands; his head dropped forward, and he spat feebly on the floor.

The pressman laughed and slapped Dad on the back, and asked "How do you feel, old boy?" Dad shook his head and spat and spat. But presently he wiped his eyes with his shirt-sleeve and looked up. The pressman told Mother she ought to be proud of Dad. Dad struggled to his feet then, pale but smiling. The pressman shook hands with him, and in no time Dad was laughing and joking over the operation. A pleased look was in Mother's face; happiness filled the home again, and we grew quite fond of that pressman—he was so jolly and affable, and made himself so much at home, Mother said.

"Now, sit over, and we'll have supper," said Dad, proud of having some fried steak to offer the visitors. We had killed a cow the evening before—one that was always getting bogged in the dam and taking up much of Dad's time dragging her out and cutting greenstuff to keep her alive. The visitors enjoyed her. The pressman wanted salt. None was on the table. Dad told Joe to run and get some—to be quick. Joe went out, but in a while returned. He stood at the door with the hammer in his hand and said:

"Did you shift the r-r-r-rock-salt from where S-Spotty was lickin' it this evenin', Dave?"

Dave reached for the bread.

"Don't bother—don't bother about it," said the pressman. "Sit down, youngster, and finish your supper."

"No bother at all," Dad said; but Joe sat down, and Dad scowled at him.

Then Dad got talking about wheat and wallabies—when, all at once, the pressman gave a jump that rattled the things on the table.

"Oh-h-h!...I'VE got it now!" he said, dropping his knife and fork and clapping his hands over his mouth. "Ooh!"

We looked at him. "Got what?" Dad asked, a gleam of satisfaction appearing in his eyes.

"The toothache!—the d——d toothache!...Oh-h!"

"Ha! ha! Hoo! hoo! hoo!" Dad roared. In fact, we all roared—all but the pressman. "OH-H!" he said, and went to the fire. Dad laughed some more.

We ate on. The pressman continued to moan.

Dad turned on his seat. "What paper, mister, do you say you come from?"

"OH-H!...Oh-h, Lord!"

"Well, let me see; I'll have in altogether, I daresay, this year, about thirty-five acres of wheat—I suppose as good a wheat——"

"Damn the wheat!...OOH!"

"Eh!" said Dad, "why, I never thought toothache was THET bad! You reminds me of this old cow we be eatin'. SHE moaned just like thet all the time she was layin' in the gully, afore I knocked 'er on the head."

Canty, the storekeeper, looked up quickly, and the pressman looked round slowly—both at Dad.

"Here," continued Dad—"let's have a look at yer tooth, old man!"

The pressman rose. His face was flushed and wild-looking. "Come on out of this—for God's sake!" he said to Canty—"if you're ready."

"What," said Dad, hospitably, "y're not going, surely!" But they were. "Well, then—thirty-five acres of wheat, I have, and" (putting his head out the door and calling after them) "NEXT year—next year, all being well, please God, I'll have SIXTY!"

Chapter XXIV.

A Lady at Shingle Hut.

Miss Ribbone had just arrived.

She was the mistress of the local school, and had come to board with us a month. The parents of the score of more of youngsters attending the school had arranged to accommodate her, month about, and it was our turn. And did n't Mother just load us up how we were to behave—particularly Joe.

Dad lumbered in the usual log for the fire, and we all helped him throw it on—all except the schoolmistress. Poor thing! She would have injured her long, miserable, putty-looking fingers! Such a contrast between her and Sal! Then we sat down to supper—that old familiar repast, hot meat and pumpkin.

Somehow we did n't feel quite at home; but Dad got on well. He talked away learnedly to Miss Ribbone about everything. Told her, without swearing once, how, when at school in the old country, he fought the schoolmaster and leathered him well. A pure lie, but an old favourite of Dad's, and one that never failed to make Joe laugh. He laughed now. And such a laugh!—a loud, mirthless, merciless noise. No one else joined in, though Miss Ribbone smiled a little. When Joe recovered he held out his plate.

"More pumpkin, Dad."

"If—what, sir?" Dad was prompting him in manners.

"IF?" and Joe laughed again. "Who said 'if'?—I never."

Just then Miss Ribbone sprang to her feet, knocking over the box she had been sitting on, and stood for a time as though she had seen a ghost. We stared at her. "Oh," she murmured at last, "it was the dog! It gave me such a fright!"

Mother sympathised with her and seated her again, and Dad fixed his eye on Joe.

"Did n't I tell you," he said, "to keep that useless damned mongrel of a dog outside the house altogether—eh?—did n't I? Go this moment and tie the brute up, you vagabond!"

"I did tie him up, but he chewed the greenhide."

"Be off with you, you—" (Dad coughed suddenly and scattered fragments of meat and munched pumpkin about the table) "at once, and do as I tell you, you——"

"That'll do, Father—that'll do," Mother said gently, and Joe took Stump out to the barn and kicked him, and hit him against the corn-sheller, and threatened to put him through it if he did n't stop squealing.

He was a small dog, a dog that was always on the watch—for meat; a shrewd, intelligent beast that never barked at anyone until he got inside and well under the bed. Anyway, he had taken a fancy to Miss Ribbone's stocking, which had fallen down while he was lying under the table, and commenced to worry it. Then he discovered she had a calf, and started to eat THAT. She did n't tell US though—she told Mrs. Macpherson, who imparted the secret to mother. I suppose Stump did n't understand stockings, because neither Mother nor Sal ever wore any, except to a picnic or somebody's funeral; and that was very seldom. The Creek was n't much of a place for sport.

"I hope as you'll be comfortable, my dear," Mother observed as she showed the young lady the back-room where she was to sleep. "It ain't s' nice as we should like to have it f' y'; we had n't enough spare bags to line it all with, but the cracks is pretty well stuffed up with husks an' one thing an' 'nother, and I don't think you'll find any wind kin get in. Here's a bear-skin f' your feet, an' I've nailed a bag up so no one kin see-in in the morning. S' now, I think you'll be pretty snug."

The schoolmistress cast a distressed look at the waving bag-door and said:

"Th-h-ank you-very much."

What a voice! I've heard kittens that had n't their eyes open make a fiercer noise.

Mother must have put all the blessed blankets in the house on the school-teacher's bed. I don't know what she had on her own, but we only had the old bag-quilt and a stack of old skirts, and other remnants of the family wardrobe, on ours. In the middle of the night, the whole confounded pile of them rolled off, and we nearly froze. Do what we boys would—tie ourselves in knots and coil into each other like ropes—we could n't get warm. We sat up in the bed in turns, and glared into the darkness towards the schoolmistress's room, which was n't more than three yards away; then we would lie back again and shiver. We were having a time. But at last we heard a noise from the young lady's room. We listened—all we knew. Miss Ribbone was up and dressing. We could hear her teeth chattering and her knees knocking together. Then we heard her sneak back to bed again and felt disappointed and colder than ever, for we had hoped she was getting up early, and would n't want the bed any longer that night. Then we too crawled out and dressed and tried it that way.

In answer to Mother at breakfast, next morning, Miss Ribbone said she had "slept very well indeed."

We did n't say anything.

She was n't much of an eater. School-teachers are n't as a rule. They pick, and paw, and fiddle round a meal in a way that gives a healthy-appetited person the jim-jams. She did n't touch the fried pumpkin. And the way she sat there at the table in her watch-chain and ribbons made poor old Dave, who sat opposite her in a ragged shirt without a shirt-button, feel quite miserable and awkward.

For a whole week she did n't take anything but bread and tea—though there was always plenty good pumpkin and all that. Mother used to speak to Dad about it, and wonder if she ate the little pumpkin-tarts she put up for her lunch. Dad could n't understand anyone not eating pumpkin, and said HE'D tackle GRASS before he'd starve.

"And did ever y' see such a object?" Mother went on. "The hands an' arms on her! Dear me! Why, I do believe if our Sal was to give her one squeeze she'd kill her. Oh, but the finery and clothes! Y' never see the like! Just look at her!" And Dad, the great oaf, with Joe at his heels, followed her into the young lady's bedroom.

"Look at that!" said Mother, pointing to a couple of dresses hanging on a nail—"she wears THEM on week-days, no less; and here" (raising the lid of a trunk and exposing a pile of clean and neatly-folded clothing that might have been anything, and drawing the articles forth one by one)—"look at them! There's that—and that—and this—and——"

"I say, what's this, Mother?" interrupted Joe, holding up something he had discovered.

"And that—an'——"

"Mother!"

"And this——"

"Eh, Mother?"

"Don't bother me, boy, it's her tooth-brush," and Mother pitched the clothes back into the trunk and glared round. Meanwhile, Joe was hard at his teeth with the brush.

"Oh, here!" and she dived at the bed and drew a night-gown from beneath the pillow, unfolded it, and held it up by the neck for inspection.

Dad, with his huge, ungainly, hairy paws behind him, stood mute, like the great pitiful elephant he was, and looked at the tucks and the rest—stupidly. "Where before did y'ever see such tucks and frills and lace on a night-shirt? Why, you'd think 't were for goin' to picnics in, 'stead o' goin' to bed with. Here, too! here's a pair of brand new stays, besides the ones she's on her back. Clothes!—she's nothin' else but clothes."

Then they came out, and Joe began to spit and said he thought there must have been something on that brush.

Miss Ribbone did n't stay the full month—she left at the end of the second week; and Mother often used to wonder afterwards why the creature never came to see us.

Chapter XXV.

The Man with the Bear-Skin Cap.

One evening a raggedly-dressed man, with a swag on his back, a bear-skin cap on his head, and a sheath-knife in his belt, came to our place and took possession of the barn. Dad ordered him off. The man offered to fight Dad for the barn. Dad ran in and got the gun. Then the man picked up his swag and went away. The incident caused much talk for a few days, but we soon forgot all about it; and the man with the bear-skin cap passed from our minds.

Church service was to be held at our selection. It was the first occasion, in fact, that the Gospel had come to disturb the contentedly irreligious mind of our neighbourhood. Service was to open at 3 p.m.; at break-of-day we had begun to get ready.

Nothing but bustle and hurry. Buttons to be sewn on Dave's shirt; Dad's pants—washed the night before and left on the clothes-line all night to bleach—lost; Little Bill's to be patched up generally; Mother trotting out to the clothes-line every minute to see if Joe's coat was dry. And, what was unusual, Dave, the easy-going, took a notion to spruce himself up. He wandered restlessly from one room to another, robed in a white shirt which was n't starched or ironed, trying hard to fix a collar to it. He had n't worn the turn-out for a couple of years, and, of course, had grown out of it, but this did n't seem to strike him. He tugged and fumbled till he lost patience; then he sat on the bed and railed at the women, and wished that the shirt and the collar, and the church-service and the parson, were in Heaven. Mother offered to fasten the collar, but when she took hold of it—forgetting that her hands were covered with dough and things—Dave flew clean off the handle! And when Sal advised him to wear his coloured shirt, same as Dad was going to do, and reminded him that Mary Anderson might n't come at all, he aimed a pillow at her and knocked Little Bill under the table, and scattered husks all over the floor. Then he fled to the barn and refused dinner.

Mid-day, and Dad's pants not found. We searched inside and outside and round about the pig-sty, and the hay-stack, and the cow-yard; and eyed the cows, and the pet kangaroo, and the draught-horses with suspicion; but saw nothing of the pants. Dad was angry, but had to make the most of an old pair of Dave's through the legs of which Dad thrust himself a lot too far. Mother and Sal said he looked well enough in them, but laughed when he went outside.

The people commenced to arrive on horseback and in drays. The women went on to the verandah with their babies; the men hung round outside and waited. Some sat under the peach-tree and nibbled sticks and killed green-heads; others leant against the fence; while a number gathered round the pig-sty and talked about curing bacon.

The parson came along. All of them stared at him; watched him unsaddle his horse and hunt round for a place to fasten the beast. They regarded the man in the long black coat with awe and wonder.

Everything was now ready, and, when Dad carried in the side-boards of the dray and placed them on boxes for seat accommodation, the clergyman awaited his congregation, which had collected at the back-door. Anderson stepped in; the rest followed, timid-looking, and stood round the room till the clergyman motioned them to sit. They sat and watched him closely.

"We'll now join in singing hymn 499," said the parson, commencing to sing himself. The congregation listened attentively, but did n't join in. The parson jerked his arms encouragingly at them, which only made them the more uneasy. They did n't understand. He snapped his arms harder, as he lifted his voice to the rafters; still they only stared. At last Dad thought he saw through him. He bravely stood up and looked hard at the others. They took the hint and rose clumsily to their feet, but just then the hymn closed, and, as no one seemed to know when to sit again, they remained standing.

They were standing when a loud whip-crack sounded close to the house, and a lusty voice roared:

"Wah Tumbler! Wah Tumbler! Gee back, Brandy! Gee back, you——!——!!——!!!"

People smiled. Then a team of bullocks appeared on the road. The driver drawled, "Wa-a-a-y!" and the team stopped right in front of the door. The driver lifted something weighty from the dray and struggled to the verandah with it and dropped it down. It was a man. The bullock-driver, of course, did n't know that a religious service was being conducted inside, and the chances are he did n't much care. He only saw a number of faces looking out, and talked at them.

"I've a —— cove here," he said, "that I found lying on the —— plain. Gawd knows what's up with him—I don't. A good square feed is about what he wants, I reckon." Then he went back for the man's swag.

Dad, after hesitating, rose and went out. The others followed like a flock of sheep; and the "shepherd" brought up the rear. Church was out. It gathered around the seeming corpse, and stared hard at it. Dad and Dave spoke at the same time.

"Why," they said, "it's the cove with the bear-skin cap!" Sure enough it was. The clergyman knelt down and felt the man's pulse; then went and brought a bottle from his valise—he always carried the bottle, he said, in case of snake-bite and things like that—and poured some of the contents down the man's throat. The colour began to come to the man's face. The clergyman gave him some more, and in a while the man opened his eyes. They rested on Dad, who was bending benignly over him. He seemed to recognise Dad. He stared for some time at him, then said something in a feeble whisper, which the clergyman interpreted—"He wishes you—" looking at Dad—"to get what's in his swag if he dies." Dad nodded, and his thoughts went sadly back to the day he turned the poor devil out of the barn.

They carried the man inside and placed him on the sofa. But soon he took a turn. He sank quickly, and in a few moments he was dead. In a few moments more nearly everyone had gone.

"While you are here," Dad said to the clergyman, in a soft voice, "I'll open the swag." He commenced to unroll it—it was a big blanket—and when he got to the end there were his own trousers—the lost ones, nothing more. Dad's eyes met Mother's; Dave's met Sal's; none of them spoke. But the clergyman drew his own conclusions; and on the following Sunday, at Nobby-Nobby, he preached a stirring sermon on that touching bequest of the man with the bear-skin cap.