Robbery Under Arms [32]
`I shouldn't mind; I should go halves with some one else who had a bigger one,' I said. `More money too, more horses, more sheep, a bigger house! Why should he have it and not me?'
`That's a lazy man's argument, and -- well, not an honest man's,' said George, getting up and putting on his cabbage-tree. `I can't sit and hear you talk such rot. Nobody can work better than you and Jim, when you like. I wonder you don't leave such talk to fellows like Frowser, that's always spouting at the Shearers' Arms.'
`Nonsense or not, if a dry season comes and knocks all our work over, I shall help myself to some one's stuff that has more than he knows what to do with.'
`Why can't we all go shearing, and make as much as will keep us for six months?' said George. `I don't know what we'd do without the squatters.'
`Nor I either; more ways than one; but Jim and I are going shearing next week. So perhaps there won't be any need for "duffing" after all.'
`Oh, Dick!' said Aileen, `I can't bear to hear you make a joke of that kind of thing. Don't we all know what it leads to! Wouldn't it be better to live on dry bread and be honest than to be full of money and never know the day when you'd be dragged to gaol?'
`I've heard all that before; but ain't there lots of people that have made their money by all sorts of villainy, that look as well as the best, and never see a gaol?'
`They're always caught some day,' says poor Aileen, sobbing, `and what a dreadful life of anxiety they must lead!'
`Not at all,' I said. `Look at Lucksly, Squeezer, and Frying-pan Jack. Everybody knows how they got their stock and their money. See how they live. They've got stations, and public-house and town property, and they get richer every year. I don't think it pays to be too honest in a dry country.'
`You're a naughty boy, Dick; isn't he, Jim?' she said, smiling through her tears. `But he doesn't mean half what he says, does he?'
`Not he,' says Jim; `and very likely we'll have lots of rain after all.'
Chapter 8
The `big squatter', as he was called on our side of the country, was Mr. Falkland. He was an Englishman that had come young to the colony, and worked his way up by degrees. He had had no money when he first came, people said; indeed, he often said so himself. He was not proud, at any rate in that way, for he was not above telling a young fellow that he should never be downhearted because he hadn't a coat to his back or a shilling in his pocket, because he, Herbert Falkland, had known what it was to be without either. `This was the best country in the whole world,' he used to say, `for a gentleman who was poor or a working man.' The first sort could always make an independence if they were moderately strong, liked work, and did not drink. There were very few countries where idle, unsteady people got rich. `As for the poor man, he was the real rich man in Australia; high wages, cheap food, lodging, clothing, travelling. What more did he want? He could save money, live happily, and die rich, if he wasn't a fool or a rogue. Unfortunately, these last were highly popular professions; and many people, high and low, belonged to them here -- and everywhere else.'
We were all well up in this kind of talk, because for the last two or three years, since we had begun to shear pretty well, we had always shorn at his shed. He was one of those gentlemen -- and he was a gentleman, if ever there was one -- that takes a deal of notice of his working hands, particularly if they were young. Jim he took a great fancy to the first moment he saw him. He didn't care so much about me.
`You're a sulky young dog, Richard Marston,' he used to say. `I'm not sure that you'll come to any good; and though I don't like to say all I hear about your father before you, I'm afraid he doesn't teach you anything worth knowing. But Jim there's a grand fellow; if he'd been caught young and weaned from all of your lot, he'd have been an honour to the land he was born in. He's too good for you all.'
`Every one of you gentlemen