While the Billy Boils, Henry Lawson [hardest books to read .txt] 📗

chewing her cud. Her nose is well up and forward, and her eyes are shut. She lets her lower jaw fall a little, moves it to one side, lifts it again, and brings it back into position with a springing kind of jerk that has almost a visible recoil. Then her jaws stay perfectly still for a moment, and you would think she had stopped chewing. But she hasn’t. Now and again a soft, easy, smooth-going swallow passes visibly along her clean, white throat and disappears. She chews again, and by and by she loses consciousness and forgets to chew. She never opens her eyes. She is young and in good condition; she has had enough to eat, the sun is just properly warm for her, and⁠—well, if an animal can be really happy, she ought to be.

Presently the two men drag themselves away from the fence, fill their pipes, and go to have a look at some rows of forked sticks, apparently stuck in the ground for some purpose. The selector calls these sticks fruit-trees, and he calls the place “the orchard.” They fool round these wretched sticks until dinnertime, when the neighbour says he must be getting home. “Stay and have some dinner! Man alive! Stay and have some dinner!” says the selector; and so the friend stays.

It is a broiling hot day in summer, and the dinner consists of hot roast meat, hot baked potatoes, hot cabbage, hot pumpkin, hot peas, and burning-hot plum-pudding. The family drinks on an average four cups of tea each per meal. The wife takes her place at the head of the table with a broom to keep the fowls out, and at short intervals she interrupts the conversation with such exclamations as “Shoo! shoo!” “Tommy, can’t you see that fowl? Drive it out!” The fowls evidently pass a lot of their time in the house. They mark the circle described by the broom, and take care to keep two or three inches beyond it. Every now and then you see a fowl on the dresser amongst the crockery, and there is great concern to get it out before it breaks something. While dinner is in progress two steers get into the wheat through a broken rail which has been spliced with stringy-bark, and a calf or two break into the vineyard. And yet this careless Australian selector, who is too shiftless to put up a decent fence, or build a decent house and who knows little or nothing about farming, would seem by his conversation to have read up all the great social and political questions of the day. Here are some fragments of conversation caught at the dinner-table. Present⁠—the selector, the missus, the neighbour, Corney George⁠—nicknamed “Henry George”⁠—Tommy, Jacky, and the younger children. The spaces represent interruptions by the fowls and children:⁠—

Corney George (continuing conversation): “But Henry George says, in Progress and Poverty, he says⁠—”

Missus (to the fowls): “Shoo! Shoo!”

Corney: “He says⁠—”

Tom: “Marther, jist speak to this Jack.”

Missus (to Jack): “If you can’t behave yourself, leave the table.”

Tom: “He says in Progress and⁠—”

Missus: “Shoo!”

Neighbour: “I think ‘Lookin’ Backwards’ is more⁠—”

Missus: “Shoo! Shoo! Tom, can’t you see that fowl?”

Selector: “Now I think Caesar’s Column is more likely⁠—. Just look at⁠—”

Missus: “Shoo! Shoo!”

Selector: “Just look at the French Revolution.”

Corney: “Now, Henry George⁠—”

Tom: “Marther! I seen a old-man kangaroo up on⁠—”

Missus: “Shut up! Eat your dinner an’ hold your tongue. Carn’t you see someone’s speakin’?”

Selector: “Just look at the French⁠—”

Missus (to the fowls): “Shoo! Shoo!” (turning suddenly and unexpectedly on Jacky): “Take your fingers out of the sugar!⁠—Blast yer! that I should say such a thing.”

Neighbour: “But ‘Lookin’ Backwards’ ”

Missus: “There you go, Tom! Didn’t I say you’d spill that tea? Go away from the table!”

Selector: “I think Caesar’s Column is the only natural⁠—”

Missus: “Shoo! Shoo!” She loses patience, gets up and fetches a young rooster with the flat of the broom, sending him flying into the yard; he falls with his head towards the door and starts in again. Later on the conversation is about Deeming.

Selector: “There’s no doubt the man’s mad⁠—”

Missus: “Deeming! That Windsor wretch! Why, if I was in the law I’d have him boiled alive! Don’t tell me he didn’t know what he was doing! Why, I’d have him⁠—”

Corney: “But, missus, you⁠—”

Missus (to the fowls): “Shoo! Shoo!”

That There Dog o’ Mine

Macquarie the shearer had met with an accident. To tell the truth, he had been in a drunken row at a wayside shanty, from which he had escaped with three fractured ribs, a cracked head, and various minor abrasions. His dog, Tally, had been a sober but savage participator in the drunken row, and had escaped with a broken leg. Macquarie afterwards shouldered his swag and staggered and struggled along the track ten miles to the Union Town hospital. Lord knows how he did it. He didn’t exactly know himself. Tally limped behind all the way, on three legs.

The doctors examined the man’s injuries and were surprised at his endurance. Even doctors are surprised sometimes⁠—though they don’t always show it. Of course they would take him in, but they objected to Tally. Dogs were not allowed on the premises.

“You will have to turn that dog out,” they said to the shearer, as he sat on the edge of a bed.

Macquarie said nothing.

“We cannot allow dogs about the place, my man,” said the doctor in a louder tone, thinking the man was deaf.

“Tie him up in the yard then.”

“No. He must go out. Dogs are not permitted on the grounds.”

Macquarie rose slowly to his feet, shut his agony behind his set teeth, painfully buttoned his shirt over his hairy chest, took up his waistcoat, and staggered to the corner where the swag lay.

“What are you going to do?” they asked.

“You ain’t going to let my dog stop?”

“No. It’s against the rules. There are no dogs allowed on premises.”

He stooped and lifted his swag, but the pain was too great, and he leaned back