Part 7 (1/2)
”Terrible place, indeed; see if _you_ had to provide a home what you'd have in it. You was never done squarkin' for that stove; some one else had one like it, an' you was goin' to do strokes w'en you got it. It's always easy to complain about things w'en you are not the one responsible!”
Grandma and I decided to go to the kitchen and prescribe for the stove.
From an idle onlooker's point of view it seemed an excellent domestic implement in good health; but the beautiful cook averred it would produce no heat.
”It must be like Bray's,” said grandma, ”they thought it was no good, and it was only because of some damper that had to be fixed.”
”Yes; and they had a man there to fix it for them; that's the terrible want about this place, there being no _man_ about it to do anything,”
Dawn said pointedly, looking at Uncle Jake, who was calmly sitting in his big chair in the corner. He was not disconcerted. A man who could live for years on a widowed sister without making himself worth his salt is not of the calibre to be upset by a few hints.
”I've busted up me pants again,” cheerfully announced Andrew from the doorway--misfortunes never come singly. ”Dawn, just get a needle and cotton and st.i.tch 'em together.”
”I never knew you when they weren't 'busted up,' and you can get another pair or hold a towel round you till Carry comes home; she's got to do the mending, it's her week in the house. I've got enough to worry me, goodness knows!”
”Dear me!” said grandma, walking away as I once more volunteered to be a friend in need to Andrew, ”w'en people is young, an' a little thing goes wrong, they think they have the troubles of a empire upon them, but the real troubles of life teaches 'em different. You are a good-for-nothink lump anyhow, Andrew. Where have you been on a Sunday morning tearing round the country?”
Andrew threw no light on the question, and his grandma repeated it.
”Where have you been, I say--answer me at once?”
”Oh, where haven't I been!” returned Andrew a trifle roughly, ”I couldn't be tellin' you where I've been. A feller might as well be in a bloomin' gla.s.s case as carry a pocket-book around an' make a map of where he's been.”
The old lady's eyes flashed.
”None of yer cheek to me, young man! You're getting too big for yer boots since you left school. If in five minutes you don't tell me where you've been an' who you was with, I'll screw the neck off of you. Nice thing while you're a child an' looking to me for everythink that goes into your stummick an' is put on your back, an' I'm responsible for you, that you can't answer me civil. Your actions can't bear lookin' into, it seems. I'll go over an' see Mr Bray about it this afternoon if you don't tell me at once.”
”I ain't been anywhere, only pokin' up an' down the lanes with Jack Bray.”
”Well, why couldn't you say so at once without raisin' this rumpus.
Them as has rared any boys don't know what it is to die of idleness an' want of vexation.”
”It wasn't _me_ rose the rumpus. Some people always blames others for what they do themselves: it 'u'd give a bloke th' pip,” grumbled Andrew, as I put the last st.i.tch in his trousers and his grandma departed. Her black Sunday dress rustled aggressively, and her plain bibless holland ap.r.o.n, which she never took off except when her bonnet went on for street appearance or when she went to bed, and her little Quaker collars and cuffs of muslin edged with lace, were even more immaculate than on week-days. She scorned a cap, and her features were so well cut that she looked well with the grey hair--wonderfully plentiful and wavy for one of her years,--simply parted and tidily coiled at the back. This costume or toilet, always fresh and never shabby, was invariably completed by a style of light house-boots, introduced to me as ”lastings”; and there was an unimpaired vigour of intellect in their wearer good to contemplate in a woman of the people aged seventy-five.
It came on to rain after dinner and confined us all to the house.
Dawn borrowed an exciting love-story from Miss Flipp; grandma read a ”good” book; Uncle Jake still pored over the 'Noonoon Advertiser,'
while Andrew repaired a large amount of fis.h.i.+ng-tackle, with which during the time I knew him I never knew him to catch a fish, and Carry grumbled about the rain.
”Poor Carry!” sympathised Andrew, ”she can't git out to do a spoon with Larry, an' the poor bloke can't come in--he's so sweet, you know, a drop of rain would melt him.”
”It would take something to melt you,” retorted Carry. ”The only thing I can see good in the rain is that it will keep Mrs Bray away.”
And thus pa.s.sed my first full day at Clay's.
SEVEN.
THE LITTLE TOWN OF NOONOON.
The little town, situated whereaway it does not particularly matter, and whose name is a palindrome, is one of the oldest and most old-fas.h.i.+oned in Australia. Less than three dozen miles per road, and not many more minutes by train from the greatest city in the Southern hemisphere, yet many of its native population are more unpolished in appearance than the bush-whackers from beyond Bourke, the Cooper, and the far Paroo. It is an agricultural region, and this in some measure accounts for the slouching appearance of its people. Men cannot wrest a first-hand living from the soil and at the same time cultivate a Piccadilly club-land style and air.