Robbery Under Arms - Rolf Boldrewood (most important books of all time .TXT) 📗

the squatters’ cattle, and we liked attending the muster because there was plenty of galloping about and cutting out, and fun in the men’s hut at night, and often a half-crown or so for helping someone away with a big mob of cattle or a lot for the pound. Father didn’t go himself, and I used to notice that whenever we came up and said we were Ben Marston’s boys both master and super looked rather glum, and then appeared not to think any more about it. I heard the owner of one of these stations say to his managing man, “Pity, isn’t it? fine boys, too.” I didn’t understand what they meant. I do now.

We could do a few things besides riding, because, as I told you before, we had been to a bit of a school kept by an old chap that had once seen better days, that lived three miles off, near a little bush township. This village, like most of these places, had a public-house and a blacksmith’s shop. That was about all. The publican kept the store, and managed pretty well to get hold of all the money that was made by the people round about, that is of those that were “good drinking men.” He had half-a-dozen children, and, though he was not up to much, he wasn’t that bad that he didn’t want his children to have the chance of being better than himself. I’ve seen a good many crooked people in my day, but very few that, though they’d given themselves up as a bad job, didn’t hope a bit that their youngsters mightn’t take after them. Curious, isn’t it? But it is true, I can tell you. So Lammerby, the publican, though he was a greedy, sly sort of fellow, that bought things he knew were stolen, and lent out money and charged everybody two prices for the things he sold ’em, didn’t like the thought of his children growing up like Myall cattle, as he said himself, and so he fished out this old Mr. Howard, that had been a friend or a victim or some kind of pal of his in old times, near Sydney, and got him to come and keep school.

He was a curious man, this Mr. Howard. What he had been or done none of us ever knew, but he spoke up to one of the squatters that said something sharp to him one day in a way that showed us boys that he thought himself as good as he was. And he stood up straight and looked him in the face, till we hardly could think he was the same man that was so bent and shambling and broken-down-looking most times. He used to live in a little hut in the township all by himself. It was just big enough to hold him and us at our lessons. He had his dinner at the inn, along with Mr. and Mrs. Lammerby. She was always kind to him, and made him puddings and things when he was ill. He was pretty often ill, and then he’d hear us our lessons at the bedside, and make a short day of it.

Mostly he drank nothing but tea. He used to smoke a good deal out of a big meerschaum pipe with figures on it that he used to show us when he was in a good humour. But two or three times a year he used to set-to and drink for a week, and then school was left off till he was right. We didn’t think much of that. Everybody, almost, that we knew did the same⁠—all the men⁠—nearly all, that is⁠—and some of the women⁠—not mother, though; she wouldn’t have touched a drop of wine or spirits to save her life, and never did to her dying day. We just thought of it as if they’d got a touch of fever or sunstroke, or broke a rib or something. They’d get over it in a week or two, and be all right again.

All the same, poor old Mr. Howard wasn’t always on the booze, not by any manner of means. He never touched a drop of anything, not even ginger-beer, while he was straight, and he kept us all going from nine o’clock in the morning till three in the afternoon, summer and winter, for more than six years. Then he died, poor old chap⁠—found dead in his bed one morning. Many a basting he gave me and Jim with an old malacca cane he had with a silver knob to it. We were all pretty frightened of him. He’d say to me and Jim and the other boys, “It’s the best chance of making men of yourselves you ever had, if you only knew it. You’ll be rich farmers or settlers, perhaps magistrates, one of these days⁠—that is, if you’re not hanged. It’s you, I mean,” he’d say, pointing to me and Jim and the Dalys; “I believe some of you will be hanged unless you change a good deal. It’s cold blood and bad blood that runs in your veins, and you’ll come to earn the wages of sin some day. It’s a strange thing,” he used to say, as if he was talking to himself, “that the girls are so good, while the boys are delivered over to the Evil One, except a case here and there. Look at Mary Darcy and Jane Lammerby, and my little pet Aileen here. I defy any village in Britain to turn out such girls⁠—plenty of rosy-cheeked gigglers⁠—but the natural refinement and intelligence of these little damsels astonishes me.”

Well, the old man died suddenly, as I said, and we were all very sorry, and the school was broken up. But he had taught us all to write fairly and to keep accounts, to read and spell decently, and to know a little geography. It wasn’t a great deal, but what we knew we knew well, and I often think of what he said,