Selected Stories By Henry Lawson Part 45

Mitch.e.l.l sat on his swag, with his pint of tea on the ground by his foot, and chewed his pipe.

"What's up, Jack?" I asked. "Have you got the blues?"

"Well, yes, Harry," he said. "I'm generally dull the first day on the track. The first day is generally the worst, anywhere or any time-except, perhaps, when you're married...I got-Well, I got thinking of the time when a woman's word could have hurt me."

Just then one of the "travellers" who were camped a bit up the creek suddenly commenced to sing. It was a song called "The Shearer's Dream", and I suppose the buggy of girls, or the conversation they started, reminded him of it. He started his verses and most of his lines with a howl; and there were unexpected howls all through the song, and it wailed off, just as unexpectedly, in places where there was no pathos that I could see: Oh, I dreamt I sh.o.r.e in a shearers' shed, and it was a dream of joy, For every one of the rouseabouts was a girl dressed up as a boy-Dressed up like a page in a pantomime, and the prettiest ever seen-They had flaxen hair, they had coal-black hair-and every shade between.

"Every" with sudden and great energy, a long drop on to "shade", and a wail of intense sadness and regret running on into "between", the dirge reaching its wailsomest in the "tween" in every case.

The shed was cooled by electric fans that was over every "shoot"; The pens was of polished ma-ho-gany, and ev'rything else to suit; The huts was fixed with spring-mattresses, and the tucker was simply grand, And every night by the biller-bong we danced to a German band.

"Chorus, boys!"

There was short, plump girls, there was tall, slim girls, and the handsomest ever seen-They was four-foot-five, they was six-foot high, and hevery size between.

Our pay was the wool on the jumbucks' backs, so we sh.o.r.e till all was blue-The sheep was washed afore they was sh.o.r.e (and the rams was scented too); And we all of us cried when the shed cut out, in spite of the long, hot days, For hevery hour them girls waltzed in with whisky and beer on tr-a-a-a-ys!

"Chorus! you--!"

They had kind grey eyes, they had coal-black eyes, and the grandest ever seen-They had plump pink hands, they had slim white hands, and hevery shape be-tw-e-e-n. There was three of them girls to every chap, and as jealous as they could be- "Ow! you--"

The singer's voice or memory seemed suddenly to have failed him at this point, but whether his mates. .h.i.t him on the back of the head with a tomahawk, or only choked him, I do not know. Mitch.e.l.l was inclined to think, from the sound of it, that they choked him.

FROM ELDER MAN'S LANE.

Johnson's Jag.

THIS promises to be a rambling sort of sketch; or it may turn out to be a short story-or several short stories. Or a suggestion for some, or even for a novel. It might be the beginning of a series of sketches. I don't know definitely where it will end, but I'm sure it will end somewhere. That depends on the eccentricities, not of genius, but of Australian editors.

Within a sling-shot of the Bulletin office, in a northerly direction, lies a waterside lane which I shall call Elder Man's Lane, because the one flagged footpath is so narrow that it is impossible for two ordinary men to pa.s.s each other on it abreast, though two "slabs" might sidle past face to face (they might do it back to back, but that wouldn't be polite), and because it seems the unwritten law of the lane that the feelingly younger wanderer therein should step off into the dust or mud and give way to the seemingly older one, irrespective of size or dress. The Lane is unmade, as yet, and can be muddy or dusty when it likes.

The Lane runs from George Street North to nowhere in particular as yet. You can climb out of it by a green hill if you think you're wanted at the other end (there's an old pub on top of that hill, and many ways of escape); but it leads to a dingy North Sh.o.r.e Horse Ferry, and so may be said to lead to all the Northern Suburbs, and even to Manly and Hornsby. For the matter of that, it might even be said to lead to Europe, Asia, Africa and America, and a good many of the South Sea Islands; for there's a short side branch, or bottomless pocket, a step down to the wharves where the princ.i.p.al liners lie. Agood deal of our raw material goes out of the country that way, so "bottomless pocket" fits the case. The Lane itself is boomerang-shaped, so you can't see what's at the end of it till you get there. It's like Middle Age Lane in this respect. I know of no other lane less frequented by ordinary folk, or the aristocracy, or the demi-monde; though the dead pa.s.s through it often. Also the dead beat, and those who wish they were dead-or drunk.

Occasionally, about nine o'clock on a fine morning, you'll see (or observe) a fairly well dressed and apparently respectable citizen and business man coming over on the Horse Ferry, or in Elder Man's Lane. He holds himself aloof, paces slowly, even nervously, up and down, or resolutely surveys the beautiful Harbour with his back to the World and all its paltrinesses; yet he seems to have a definite immediate object in view. And you may be almost sure (1) that that man has been in very recent trouble, extending over breakfast this morning; (2) that he has eaten little or no breakfast; and (3) that the definite object is to get a good whisky and soda just as soon as he reaches a bar he knows.

I'll tell you how it was.

There's my friend Johnson-or, rather, there was. Better put it all in the past tense, for various reasons. Johnson lived on the Sh.o.r.e and was employed in a Government office where he was indispensable. Say, draughtsman or something. He was exceedingly clever in his art or profession, and so, of course, he drank too much. When his "week" came to him-generally at the end of the month-he'd leave the office with his screw, have a few drinks with the fellows at the Exchange or Empire; and then, as repeatedly instructed right out the gate that morning, he'd conscientiously take a tram right back and down to Anthony Hordern's, with a finger and thumb constantly and anxiously feeling a half-sheet of cheap, closely-folded note-paper, in his upper, left-hand waist-coat pocket, which he had been constantly losing, and hunting for, and finding again all day, and which would contain something as follows, written in a feminine hand that was characteristic: 1 yard Black Satin (for Piping) 3/4 yard Fancy Cream Lace (for Yoke) 2 doz. Black Satin b.u.t.tons 1 yard cream gipuire edging 2 reels of silk to match material 2 doz. Pat. Fasteners 2 cards hooks and eyes 1 set collar supports Be sure you go to Anthony Hordern's and don't forget what I told you. And don't lose this.

Then Johnson would have another drink, opposite Anthony Hordern's, to clear his brain and brace him up; and then a hurried, blurred recollection of carved lifts, and vistas of varnish and everything a woman knows, and lovely, graceful, saint-like shop girls (or sales ladies), and a smiling, sympathetic shop-walker, taken into his (Johnson's) confidence, and asked if he was a married man, and informed, in return that he (Johnson) was a married man too, and shaken hands with, with the exaggerated warmth of affected sympathy-and shown that list. Then various stairs and different departments. The shop-walkers and salesmen on different floors and behind different counters would stick to Johnson like a brother and see him through. Perhaps they were mostly married men too. Then, after a friendly and jocular (on Johnson's part) interval, he'd be conducted gently to the right lift and bowed in, after the last shop-walker had smilingly declined an invitation to come out and have a drink. And Johnson would find himself on the level again, with his bag half full of very soft and perishable feminine rubbish in brown tissue paper parcels-and in urgent need of another whisky.

Then Johnson would charge two Circular Quay trams, catch a third, and cling to it tooth and nail, possibly with an instinctive idea of putting as much of the jumbled city between him and Anthony Hordern's as he could in the shortest possible time, and regaining the beloved vicinity of Circular Quay, where he could feel safe. He'd drop off short of the Quay, have another drink, at the Bulletin's own pub, and then go into the shop of another friend of mine, Jack Sotero the Greek hairdresser, to have a shave and a trim-and a shampoo, maybe, to freshen him up, and to collect his thoughts. (It's all right! We'll get back to the Horse Ferry and Elder Man's Lane soon enough.) And he'd get talking with Sotero about the "Eastern Question", and maybe argue, and they'd both get excited. Sotero would, sure. Johnson reckoned the Turks would have to get out of Europe; but Sotero and his friends would have a tough job. The Turks didn't go much on uniforms and gold braid, but they had the latest rifles and the best ammunition, and they kept their rifles clean. And they had pluck. Ask Russia. (Sotero, by the way, never forgave his countrymen for throwing away their chance in '76, and letting Russia in for it.) Then Johnson, partly sober, would retire to a private place and take stock of his finances. He'd abstract a few more s.h.i.+llings, for current expenses, from that portion of his monthly "screw" set apart earlier in the afternoon for the use of his wife, wrap the remainder up tight in another half-sheet of newspaper, and b.u.t.ton it up in his hip pocket. Then he'd make for the Quay, calling in on Ireland on the way, and getting another drink and more inspiration there.

Then the world would begin to move.

Fate would have one-or, more likely, two; they mostly go by twos-of Johnson's deplorable acquaintances loitering on the footpath opposite the Quay; and Johnson would stumble into their arms; and they'd go into one of the first-and-last hotels to see if they could keep another one down. And, as likely as not, they'd find others of the Johnsonian school there.

The vicinity would remind Johnson of fish, and another thing; so they'd adjourn, and maybe there'd be stewed oysters; and Johnson would make one or two purchases on his own account. But the fat, futile, vacuously smiling, oily, and fish-like faces of degenerate Italy would exasperate Johnson by-and-by, and the Trouble in Southern Europe would come to the surface again, and Johnson would hold forth to the edification of the cropped and grinning dagoes of the fish shop. He'd be all Turk now-he was always for the weaker side, was Johnson-and he'd get fightable. But his friends would steer him out before Tripoli had a chance of being avenged by her latest ally.

Then they'd adjourn to keep another one down, and Johnson would buy a "parrot" (i.e., flask of whisky for the morning), with the fixed intention of going right across and straight home now. His friends would see him to the turnstiles, and he'd go through, informing an unresponsive public, in a loud voice, and with curious inconsistency (considering the fish shop), that Her Naiad grace had brought him home, To the grandeur which was Greece, And the glory which was Rome. He had the choice of two ferry boats, the Milson's Point one and the Lavender Bay one, and was known equally well on either; but his Fate would have the most crowded one of the evening, and the one with the greatest number of his acquaintances, friends, enemies, neighbours, and those who knew him by sight on board, just ready for him to the minute, and his Fate would steer him on board. And, of course, he'd make a prize a.s.s of himself. He'd surpa.s.s all previous efforts in that direction. He'd hold forth on politics; he'd sing and recite revolutionary verses; he'd sing-or try to sing-"The Wearin' o' the Green" and "The Ma.r.s.eillaise". He'd be "Wae's me for Prince Chairlie" till his friends were heartbroken; and he'd bellow while his enemies applauded. He was Pro-Russ, Pro-Boer, Pro-Australia, Pro-Husband, Pro-Man, Pro-Beer-all Pro at this stage; and he'd arise on the upper deck and denounce the Antis with indignation and enthusiasm that brought him to the verge of tears. And all this in the heart of the Liberal stronghold. And he'd continue on the tram, only interrupted when he refused to pay a degenerate Government a fare, and one of his friends, the tram guards, took his name and address for appearances' sake. They used to have their books full of Johnson's name and address. He wrote it, sometimes, himself. They all seemed to like Johnson. I don't know why.

At the Last Pub on the Heights, near his home, Johnson would pull himself together a bit and seek a private parlour-or still more private place-and once more review the state of his finances. (The Horse Ferry and Elder Man's Lane are very near now.) He'd carefully distribute threepences and sixpences through his various pockets for his wife to find when he'd be asleep. Then, if short, he'd borrow another half-crown or five s.h.i.+llings from her share, to finish up the night with, and have something in hand for the morning; then he'd carefully wrap up the Share again and b.u.t.ton it down in his hip pocket; then he'd put one half-crown in one of the other pockets, take off his boot, put the other half-crown in his sock under the instep, put on his boot again, and seek the bar-where, as likely as not, he'd meet yet another of the Johnsonian Brotherhood, and they'd finish the night. Unless his Fate led him home through the main street, singing, just as the majority of his fellow-suburbanites were pouring out of the picture shows and down to the tram line. Anyway, he'd go his way, singing in the moonlight, with two bottles of White Horse on top of his wife's forgotten vanities-All is Vanity; and he'd arrive at his own gate, still singing, and still flouris.h.i.+ng the Crayfish of Confidence, or the Lobster of Faith. (Those vain peace-offerings.) He knew, or thought he knew, his wife's tastes on all occasions. He'd tell her to put her hand in his coat pocket and see what she'd find, and as like as not she'd find nothing there but dampness. Also, as like as not, she'd find It afterwards, under the bottles, and on top of her precious dress tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs: a squashed and busted newspaper parcel of very damp and stringy prawns. But he's utterly hopeless, lying on his back on the bed, and singing, or rather roaring at the top of his voice, that "He'll vote for Andy Fisher, No matter what he said!" So she undresses him hastily, gives him a stiff nip, and puts him under cover. And silence reigneth.

Now you've already forgotten the fairly well-dressed and apparently respectable citizen and man of business (or professional man-or artist) seen occasionally on the Horse Ferry or in Elder Man's Lane on a fine morning about nine, whom I described some pages back as holding himself aloof on board or pacing rather nervously to and fro, yet seemingly with some definite object in view? I told you I'd tell you how it was. Well, that man was Johnson, the Morning After the Night Before. Clean-s.h.i.+rted, clean-collared, and clean-socked; and cleaned out and tray-bitless. Remember the Sock of Precaution? The half-caser was in her stocking now, along with the rest.

His wife knew Johnson's ways. He would humbly accept the copper that she spared (at great personal inconvenience, according to herself) from that voracious little instrument of unblus.h.i.+ng capitalism (though it is painted red) and demoraliser of good house-wives, the accursed gas machine. Johnson had a season ticket on the pa.s.senger ferry; but he'd be far too shaky and ashamed to face it, so he'd slip un.o.btrusively down bys-streets and lanes, and down Blue's Point Road, and on to the Horse Ferry. But he'd get a couple of good whiskies in the Bar that Knew Him, and feel his manhood returning, and go to work.

He'd slip out and have another during the forenoon and one or two during lunch hour, and maybe one in mid-afternoon, to keep his deft right hand steady. Then, between four and five, several with bachelor mates, or unprincipled husbands, who still held a fair share of their salaries. Consequently the previous night would then be repeated, but on a grander scale, and with tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, because there would be no Anthony Hordern or shave-trim-an'-shampoo intervals to steady things. Johnson would make a more glorious a.s.s of himself than ever. Apatriot, an orator, a fine singer and reciter, and the only possible saviour of his country; and with loftier contempt for the alleged spirit of Sydney (and more especially that of North Sydney), he'd time himself to catch the most crowded ferry boat across. Then, with a soul above gangways he'd go to get off. The deck hands would save his life for the severalth time and see him safe ash.o.r.e and into the hands of his friends, the tram guards. The deck hands seemed to love Johnson too. I don't know why. He broke the awful deadly monotony of Sydney in its wowser days.

Sometimes he'd insist on taking a stray mongrel home with him, in premeditated defiance of Company and Government, even if he had to carry it through the turnstiles and across on the boat to the tram, fighting for it all the way. Stray dogs took to Johnson. So did all the kids of his terrace, but they often left him literally penniless. Even in his sober periods his yard and house were sanctuary to any useless, neglected, homeless and mangy mongrel selfishly kicked out about registration time, or any deplorable outcast cat that had loved too wisely and too well-until such time as Fate provided otherwise for them. Anyway, on the tram, he'd insist on boarding and smoking defiantly in the compartment set apart for smokers; which was generally crowded with our awful New Women, though all the other compartments might be empty. And he'd hold forth against the Frightful Political Female, and female suffrage and Women's Rights, and the Wowser and the Better Protection of Women and Girls and the Sunday h.e.l.l and Rose Scott.

Rather earlier that night he'd be steered lovingly to his own gate by one or more of the Johnsonian brethren. And they'd utter words of caution in whispers that could be heard at the end of the street, and part with affection and difficulty. Then Johnson would pull himself together, go in, shut the gate softly, and go down on his knees and hide two half-crowns in the dirt under a geranium bush, fixing the spot and particular bush in his memory as only a drunk can, while his careful and providential little wife watched him thoughtfully from the front room window.

Then, next morning, the Blast of Repentance on awakening, the Horse Ferry and Elder Man's Lane. And so the thing would be repeated to the end of Johnson's Jag, with perhaps an interval of a day or two at home to recuperate. It was bad judgment; for whereas the people of North Sydney might have seen him sober once a day during his week or fortnight, they never did. He should have gone home by the Horse Ferry. But, there! what's the use of arguing with a drunk? They don't see things as you do.

It might also be said in Johnson's favour that his wife and children loved him; and his enemies might have been only in my imagination. Perhaps the applause was only the approbation of the pluckiest of the wowser-ridden. Otherwise I can't see what good Johnson might do in this series of sketches, if it is to be a series, save to give a hint of a clue or key to the secret or mystery of the writer's periodical patronage of the Vehicular Ferry.

A Child in the Dark, and a Foreign Father.

NEW Year's Eve! Ahot night in midsummer in the drought. It was so dark-with a smothering darkness-that even the low loom of the scrub-covered ridges, close at hand across the creek, was not to be seen. The sky was not clouded for rain, but with drought haze and the smoke of distant bush fires.

Down the hard road to the crossing at Pipeclay Creek sounded the footsteps of a man. Not the crunching steps of an English labourer, clod-hopping contentedly home; these sounded more like the footsteps of one pacing steadily to and fro, and thinking steadily and hopelessly-sorting out the past. Only the steps went on. Aglimmer of white moleskin trousers and a suggestion of light-coloured tweed jacket, now and again, as if in the glimmer of a faint ghost light in the darkness.

The road ran along by the foot of a line of low ridges, or spurs, and, as he pa.s.sed the gullies or gaps, he felt a breath of hotter air, like blasts from a furnace in the suffocating atmosphere. He followed a two-railed fence for a short distance, and turned in at a white batten gate. It seemed lighter now. There was a house, or, rather, a hut suggested, with whitewashed slab walls and a bark roof. He walked quietly round to the door of a detached kitchen, opened it softly, went in, and struck a match. Acandle stood, stuck in a blot of its own grease, on one end of the dresser. He lit the candle and looked round.

The walls of the kitchen were of split slabs, the roof box-bark, the floor clay, and there was a large, clay-lined fireplace, the sides a dirty brown, and the back black. It had evidently never been whitewashed. There was a bed of about a week's ashes, and above it, suspended by a blackened hook and chain from a grimy cross-bar, hung a black bucket full of warm water. The man got a fork, explored the bucket, and found what he expected: a piece of raw corned beef in water which had gone off the boil before the meat had been heated through.

The kitchen was furnished with a pine table, a well-made flour bin, and a neat safe and side-board, or dresser-evidently the work of a carpenter. The top of the safe was dirty-covered with crumbs and grease and tea stains. On one corner lay a school exercise book, with a stone ink-bottle and a pen beside it. The book was open at a page written in the form of verse, in a woman's hand, and headed: "MISUNDERSTOOD".

He took the edges of the book between his fingers and thumbs, and made to tear it, but, the cover being tough, and resisting the first savage tug, he altered his mind, and put the book down. Then he turned to the table. There was a jumble of dirty crockery on one end, and on the other, set on a sheet of stained newspaper, the remains of a meal-a junk of badly-hacked bread, a basin of dripping (with the fat over the edges), and a tin of treacle. The treacle had run down the sides of the tin on to the paper. Knives, heavy with treacle, lay glued to the paper. There was a dish with some water, a rag, and a cup or two in it-evidently an attempt to wash up.

The man took up a cup and pressed it hard between his palms, until it broke. Then he felt relieved. He gathered the fragments in one hand, took the candle, and stumbled out to where there was a dustheap. Kicking a hole in the ashes, he dropped in the bits of broken crockery, and covered them. Then his anger blazed again. He walked quickly to the back door of the house, thrust the door open, and flung in, but a child's voice said from the dark: "Is that you, father? Don't tread on me, father."

The room was nearly as bare as the kitchen. There was a table, covered with cheap American oilcloth, and, on the other side, a sofa on which a straw mattress, a cloudy blanket, and a pillow without a slip had been thrown in a heap. On the floor, between the sofa and the table, lay a boy-child almost-on a similar mattress, with a cover of coa.r.s.e sacking, and a bundle of dirty clothes for a pillow. Apale, thin-faced, dark-eyed boy.

"What are you doing here, sonny?" asked the father.

"Mother's bad again with her head. She says to tell you to come in quiet, and sleep on the sofa to-night. I started to wash up and clean up the kitchen, father, but I got sick."

"Why, what is the matter with you, sonny?" His voice quickened, and he held the candle down to the child's face.

"Oh, nothing much, father. I felt sick, but I feel better now."

"What have you been eating?"

"Nothing that I know of; I think it was the hot weather, father."

The father spread the mattress, blew out the candle, and lay down in his clothes. After a while the boy began to toss restlessly.

"Oh, it's too hot, father," he said. "I'm smothering."

The father got up, lit the candle, took a corner of the newspaper-covered "scrim" lining that screened the cracks of the slab wall, and tore it away; then he propped open the door with a chair.

"Oh, that's better already, father," said the boy.

The hut was three rooms long and one deep, with a verandah in front and a skillion harness and tool room, about half the length, behind. The father opened the door of the next room softly, and propped that open too. There was another boy on the sofa, younger than the first, but healthy and st.u.r.dy-looking. He had nothing on him but a very dirty s.h.i.+rt. Apatchwork quilt was slipping from under him, and most of it was on the floor; the boy and the pillow were nearly off, too.

The father fixed him as comfortably as possible and put some chairs by the sofa to keep him from rolling off. He noticed that somebody had started to scrub this room, and left it. He listened at the door of the third room for a few moments to the breathing within; then he opened it gently and walked in. There was an old-fas.h.i.+oned four-poster cedar bedstead, a chest of drawers, and a baby's cradle made out of a gin-case. The woman was fast asleep. She was a big, strong, and healthy-looking woman with dark hair and strong, square features. There was a plate, a knife and fork, and egg-sh.e.l.ls and a cup and saucer on the top of the chest of drawers; also two candles, one stuck in a mustard tin, and one in a pickle bottle, and a copy of Ardath.

He stepped out into the skillion and lifted some harness on to its pegs from chaff-bags in the corner. Coming in again, he nearly stumbled over a bucket half-full of dirty water on the floor, with a scrubbing-brush, some wet rags, and half a bar of yellow soap beside it. He put these things in the bucket, and carried it out. As he pa.s.sed through the first room the sick boy said: "I couldn't lift the saddle of the harness on to the peg, father. I had to leave the scrubbing to make some tea and cook some eggs for mother, and put baby to bed, and then I felt too bad to go on with the scrubbing-and I forgot about the bucket."

"Did the baby have any tea, sonny?"

"Yes. I made her bread and milk, and she ate a big plateful. The calves are in the pen all right, and I fixed the gate. And I brought a load of wood this morning, father, before mother took bad."

"You should not have done that. I told you not to. I could have done that on Sunday. Now, are you sure you didn't lift a log into the cart that was too heavy for you?"

"Quite sure, father. Oh, I'm plenty strong enough to put a load of wood on the cart."

The father lay on his back on the sofa, with his hands behind his head, for a few minutes.

"Aren't you tired, father?" asked the boy.

"No, sonny, not very tired; you must try and go to sleep now," and he reached across the table for the candle and blew it out.

Presently the baby cried, and in a moment the mother's voice was heard.

"Nils! Nils! Are you there, Nils?"

"Yes, Emma."

"Then for G.o.d's sake come and take this child away before she drives me mad! My head's splitting!"

The father went in to the child and presently returned for a cup of water.

"She only wanted a drink," the boy heard him say to the mother.

"Well, didn't I tell you she wanted a drink? I've been calling for the last half-hour, with that child screaming and not a soul to come near me, and me lying here helpless all day and not a wink of sleep for two nights."

"But, Emma, you were asleep when I came in."

"How can you tell such infernal lies? I--. To think I'm chained to a man who can't say a word of truth! G.o.d help me! To have to lie night after night in the same bed with a liar!"

The child in the first room lay quaking with terror, dreading one of those cruel and shameful scenes which had made a h.e.l.l of his childhood.

"Hush, Emma!" the man kept saying. "Do be reasonable. Think of the children. They'll hear us."

"I don't care if they do. They'll know soon enough, G.o.d knows! I wish I was under the turf!"

"Emma, do be reasonable."

"Reasonable! I--"

The child was crying again. The father came back to the first room, got something from his coat pocket, and took it in.

"Nils! are you quite mad, or do you want to drive me mad? Don't give the child that rattle! You must be either mad or a brute, and my nerves in this state. Haven't you got the slightest consideration for--."

"It's not a rattle, Emma, it's a doll."

"There you go again! Flinging your money away on rubbish that'll be on the dustheap to-morrow, and your poor wife slaving her fingernails off for you in this wretched hole, and not a decent rag to her back. Me, your clever wife that ought to be--. Light those candles, and bring me a wet towel for my head. I must read now, and try and compose my nerves, if I can."

When the father returned to the first room, the boy was sitting up in bed, looking deathly white.

"Why! what's the matter, sonny?" said the father, bending over him, and putting a hand to his back.

"Nothing, father. I'll be all right directly. Don't you worry, father."

"Where do you feel bad, sonny?"

"In my head and stomach, father; but I'll be all right d'rectly. I've often been that way."

In a minute or two he was worse.

"For G.o.d's sake, Nils, take that boy into the kitchen, or somewhere," cried the woman, "or I'll go mad! It's enough to kill a horse. Do you want to drive me into a lunatic asylum?"

"Do you feel better now, sonny?" asked the father.

"Yes, ever so much better, father," said the boy, white and weak. "I'll be all right in a minute, father."

"You had best sleep on the sofa to-night, sonny. It's cooler there."

"No, father, I'd rather stay here; it's much cooler now."

The father fixed the bed as comfortably as he could, and, despite the boy's protest, put his own pillow under his head. Then he made a fire in the kitchen, and hung the kettle and a big billy of water over it. He was haunted by recollections of convulsions amongst the children while they were teething. He took off his boots, and was about to lie down again when the mother called: "Nils! Nils! Have you made a fire?"