Robbery Under Arms, Rolf Boldrewood [pdf e book reader txt] 📗

with a fine horse in it, and was making no end of money⁠—so everybody said. He was just as kind to her and mother when he met them, and always wanted to help them. But they wouldn’t take it from him or anyone else. “Why should we?” said Aileen, holding up her head, “I can work for both of us, and what little we want I can always have.”

I looked at her hands as she said this; and it was a little thing after what we’d all gone through, but it touched me up to see how rough and hard-looking her poor hands were. In old times Jim and I had been proud of their being so small and pretty looking, almost like a lady’s. She took great care of them too. Now they began to look like any old washerwoman’s, and it made me feel savage with myself that she should have been brought to this.

“Never mind my hands, Dick,” she said, smiling at me so sweet and pitiful-like. “That’s not the worst of it. They keep my heart from aching. The harder I work the better I feel. It’s trying to do without honest labour that we were all born to that makes more than half the sin and misery in the world.”

“Why shouldn’t we be able to do without it as well as others?” I said, roughly. “Lots of men and women never do a hand’s turn, and expect us to have all the work, while they have all the play. That’s neither right nor justice, and I’ll never think it so.”

“We mustn’t be angry with one another⁠—must we, Dick?” she said, “now we meet so little; but they were born to it. We were not. Their fathers made it for them, as George Storefield is making it for his children, if he ever has any. And why shouldn’t they have the benefit of it?”

“Well, they’re good friends to us, anyhow.”

“There’s poor Gracey,” (she went on); “she rides over, and sits with me for half a day, every now and then. You can’t think how kind she is! Last time she was here I was threshing out a few oats that I knew I could sell, and nothing would serve her but she must off with her skirt, and buckle to at it with me till it was done.”

“I was wondering who threshed it, when I saw it in the barn.”

“Well, we did it between us, and great fun it was. She’s a great girl for work, and says George wants her to keep a servant, but she won’t do it just yet. I got 10 s. a bushel for the oats; wasn’t it a fine price?”

“You’re no end of a farmer,” I said. “So Gracey comes often, does she?”

“Yes, she does; she’s the only girl I almost ever see. Most people don’t trouble themselves to come to Rocky Flat now! Oh! Dick, that girl thinks of no one in the whole world but you. Don’t you think for her sake you might leave off⁠—leave off what your life is now. I know it’s hard. But surely you might find out some way to change it.”

“Change! that’s easy said. How is a fellow to change, once being started on a road like this. We may as well have some fun while our liberty lasts. Nothing’ll make much difference in the sentence we must get if we’re taken. The only chance I see is to make a good haul, and clear out of the colony altogether.”

“But is there any hope of that?” Aileen said, looking up at me with all her heart speaking in her eyes. “If I thought it was possible I should die happy.”

“Well, Starlight says so; and he’s the man to manage it if anyone can; he has friends in Melbourne and the other colonies, he says, and he believes it might be managed easy enough some day.”

“God in Heaven grant it,” she said; “it’s a blessing to think of it anyhow.”

“Why, you might have been a lady and lived in a fine house yet, if you’d made it up with George Storefield,” I said. “Why didn’t you?”

“I could never have had a better husband. I shall always respect him; but it’s all over between us for ever and a day. Poor George, I wish I could have liked him sometimes; but it doesn’t matter; nothing matters now.”

It was late enough when we parted; but there was plenty of time for sleep when I was gone, and the chances of seeing one another were getting smaller and smaller. There was no knowing what might happen to us at any time, and any little luck like this was like a bit of Heaven while it lasted. I was glad enough I’d come in spite of dad and the rest.

Next day I went off pretty early; not before daylight, though⁠—I couldn’t do that⁠—but the sun wasn’t very high for all that. It wasn’t a safe thing to hang about longer. It would be sure to leak out, and then the police would keep closer watch on the place than ever. As it was, they hadn’t bothered them much, though mother used to get all of a tremble, Aileen said, whenever she heard a horse’s hoof now or the jingle of a bit.

Before I went I wanted Aileen to take a few notes in case she needed anything for mother or herself till she saw us again. But the wouldn’t touch one of them.

“No, Dick,” she said, “not if I was starving. I wouldn’t stain my soul with using a shilling that had come in that way. We’ve enough to keep us. Why, the butter and the bacon are rising every week,” she said, trying to turn it off with a laugh. “We’re getting quite rich.”

What she said was true enough in one way, poor thing, though some people wouldn’t have turned out summer and winter at daylight, as she did, to milk the cows, feed the pigs, and