第9章

The Night We Watched For Wallabies.

It had been a bleak July day, and as night came on a bitter westerly howled through the trees. Cold! was n't it cold! The pigs in the sty, hungry and half-fed (we wanted for ourselves the few pumpkins that had survived the drought) fought savagely with each other for shelter, and squealed all the time like--well, like pigs. The cows and calves left the place to seek shelter away in the mountains; while the draught horses, their hair standing up like barbed-wire, leaned sadly over the fence and gazed up at the green lucerne. Joe went about shivering in an old coat of Dad's with only one sleeve to it--a calf had fancied the other one day that Dad hung it on a post as a mark to go by while ploughing.

"My! it'll be a stinger to-night," Dad remarked to Mrs. Brown--who sat, cold-looking, on the sofa--as he staggered inside with an immense log for the fire. A log! Nearer a whole tree! But wood was nothing in Dad's eyes.

Mrs. Brown had been at our place five or six days. Old Brown called occasionally to see her, so we knew they could n't have quarrelled.

Sometimes she did a little house-work, but more often she did n't. We talked it over together, but could n't make it out. Joe asked Mother, but she had no idea--so she said. We were full up, as Dave put it, of Mrs. Brown, and wished her out of the place. She had taken to ordering us about, as though she had something to do with us.

After supper we sat round the fire--as near to it as we could without burning ourselves--Mrs. Brown and all, and listened to the wind whistling outside. Ah, it was pleasant beside the fire listening to the wind! When Dad had warmed himself back and front he turned to us and said:

"Now, boys, we must go directly and light some fires and keep those wallabies back."That was a shock to us, and we looked at him to see if he were really in earnest. He was, and as serious as a judge.

" TO-NIGHT!" Dave answered, surprisedly--"why to-night any more than last night or the night before? Thought you had decided to let them rip?""Yes, but we might as well keep them off a bit longer.""But there's no wheat there for them to get now. So what's the good of watching them? There's no sense in THAT."Dad was immovable.

"Anyway"--whined Joe--" I'M not going--not a night like this--not when Iain't got boots."

That vexed Dad. "Hold your tongue, sir!" he said--"you'll do as you're told."But Dave had n't finished. "I've been following that harrow since sunrise this morning," he said, "and now you want me to go chasing wallabies about in the dark, a night like this, and for nothing else but to keep them from eating the ground. It's always the way here, the more one does the more he's wanted to do," and he commenced to cry. Mrs. Brown had something to say. SHE agreed with Dad and thought we ought to go, as the wheat might spring up again.

"Pshah!" Dave blurted out between his sobs, while we thought of telling her to shut her mouth.