第13章 Part I.(12)

It used to hurt and worry me to see how --just as he was getting fat and rosy and like a natural happy child,and I'd feel proud to take him out --a tooth would come along,and he'd get thin and white and pale and bigger-eyed and old-fashioned.We'd say,`He'll be safe when he gets his eye-teeth':but he didn't get them till he was two;then,`He'll be safe when he gets his two-year-old teeth':they didn't come till he was going on for three.

He was a wonderful little chap --Yes,I know all about parents thinking that their child is the best in the world.If your boy is small for his age,friends will say that small children make big men;that he's a very bright,intelligent child,and that it's better to have a bright,intelligent child than a big,sleepy lump of fat.And if your boy is dull and sleepy,they say that the dullest boys make the cleverest men --and all the rest of it.I never took any notice of that sort of clatter --took it for what it was worth;but,all the same,I don't think I ever saw such a child as Jim was when he turned two.He was everybody's favourite.

They spoilt him rather.I had my own ideas about bringing up a child.

I reckoned Mary was too soft with Jim.She'd say,`Put that'

(whatever it was)`out of Jim's reach,will you,Joe?'and I'd say,`No!leave it there,and make him understand he's not to have it.

Make him have his meals without any nonsense,and go to bed at a regular hour,'I'd say.Mary and I had many a breeze over Jim.

She'd say that I forgot he was only a baby:but I held that a baby could be trained from the first week;and I believe I was right.

But,after all,what are you to do?You'll see a boy that was brought up strict turn out a scamp;and another that was dragged up anyhow (by the hair of the head,as the saying is)turn out well.

Then,again,when a child is delicate --and you might lose him any day --you don't like to spank him,though he might be turning out a little fiend,as delicate children often do.Suppose you gave a child a hammering,and the same night he took convulsions,or something,and died --how'd you feel about it?You never know what a child is going to take,any more than you can tell what some women are going to say or do.

I was very fond of Jim,and we were great chums.Sometimes I'd sit and wonder what the deuce he was thinking about,and often,the way he talked,he'd make me uneasy.When he was two he wanted a pipe above all things,and I'd get him a clean new clay and he'd sit by my side,on the edge of the verandah,or on a log of the wood-heap,in the cool of the evening,and suck away at his pipe,and try to spit when he saw me do it.He seemed to understand that a cold empty pipe wasn't quite the thing,yet to have the sense to know that he couldn't smoke tobacco yet:he made the best he could of things.

And if he broke a clay pipe he wouldn't have a new one,and there'd be a row;the old one had to be mended up,somehow,with string or wire.

If I got my hair cut,he'd want his cut too;and it always troubled him to see me shave --as if he thought there must be something wrong somewhere,else he ought to have to be shaved too.I lathered him one day,and pretended to shave him:he sat through it as solemn as an owl,but didn't seem to appreciate it --perhaps he had sense enough to know that it couldn't possibly be the real thing.He felt his face,looked very hard at the lather I scraped off,and whimpered,`No blood,daddy!'

I used to cut myself a good deal:I was always impatient over shaving.

Then he went in to interview his mother about it.She understood his lingo better than I did.

But I wasn't always at ease with him.Sometimes he'd sit looking into the fire,with his head on one side,and I'd watch him and wonder what he was thinking about (I might as well have wondered what a Chinaman was thinking about)till he seemed at least twenty years older than me:sometimes,when I moved or spoke,he'd glance round just as if to see what that old fool of a dadda of his was doing now.

I used to have a fancy that there was something Eastern,or Asiatic --something older than our civilisation or religion --about old-fashioned children.Once I started to explain my idea to a woman I thought would understand --and as it happened she had an old-fashioned child,with very slant eyes --a little tartar he was too.I suppose it was the sight of him that unconsciously reminded me of my infernal theory,and set me off on it,without warning me.Anyhow,it got me mixed up in an awful row with the woman and her husband --and all their tribe.

It wasn't an easy thing to explain myself out of it,and the row hasn't been fixed up yet.There were some Chinamen in the district.

I took a good-size fencing contract,the frontage of a ten-mile paddock,near Gulgong,and did well out of it.The railway had got as far as the Cudgeegong river --some twenty miles from Gulgong and two hundred from the coast --and `carrying'was good then.

I had a couple of draught-horses,that I worked in the tip-drays when I was tank-sinking,and one or two others running in the Bush.

I bought a broken-down waggon cheap,tinkered it up myself --christened it `The Same Old Thing'--and started carrying from the railway terminus through Gulgong and along the bush roads and tracks that branch out fanlike through the scrubs to the one-pub towns and sheep and cattle stations out there in the howling wilderness.

It wasn't much of a team.There were the two heavy horses for `shafters';a stunted colt,that I'd bought out of the pound for thirty shillings;a light,spring-cart horse;an old grey mare,with points like a big red-and-white Australian store bullock,and with the grit of an old washerwoman to work;and a horse that had spanked along in Cob &Co.'s mail-coach in his time.I had a couple there that didn't belong to me:I worked them for the feeding of them in the dry weather.

And I had all sorts of harness,that I mended and fixed up myself.

It was a mixed team,but I took light stuff,got through pretty quick,and freight rates were high.So I got along.