The Workingman's Paradise. Джон Миллер

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СКАЧАТЬ And then he had inconsistently proceeded to describe how the squatters treated the men out West, and how the union would make them civil, and how the said squatters were mostly selfish brutes who preferred Chinese to their own colour and would stop at no trick to beat the men out of a few shillings. She had said nothing at the time, being so pleased to see him, though she determined to have it out with him sometime during this holiday they had planned. But somehow, as he stepped carelessly along, a dashing manliness in every motion, a breath of the great plains coming with his sunburnt face and belted waist, he and his self-conceit jarred to her against this sordid court and these children's desolate lives. How dared he talk as he did about only wanting what was fair, she thought! How had he the heart to care only for himself and his mates while in these city slums such misery brooded! And then it shot through her that he did not know. With a rapidity, characteristic of herself, she made up her mind to teach him.

      "Well, Nellie," he cried, cheerily, coming up to her. "And how are you again?"

      "Hello, Ned," she answered, cordially, shaking hands. "You look as though you were rounding-up."

      "Do I?" he questioned, seriously, looking down at himself. "Shirt and all? Well, if I am it's only you I came to round up. Are you ready? Did you think I wasn't coming?"

      "It won't take me a minute," she replied. "I was pretty sure you'd come. I took a holiday on the strength of it, anyway, and made an engagement for you to-night. Come in a minute, Ned. You must see Mrs. Phillips while I get my hat. You'll have to sleep here to night. It'll be so late when we get back. Unless you'd sooner go to a hotel."

      "I'm not particular," said Ned, looking round curiously, as he followed her in. "I'd never have found the place, Nellie, if it hadn't been for that pub, near the corner, where we saw that row on the other night."

      The women opposite had suspended their debate upon Mrs. Hobbs' latest, a debate fortified by manifold reminiscences of the past and possibilities of the future. It was known in the little street that Nellie Lawton intended taking a holiday with an individual who was universally accepted as her "young man," and Ned's appearance upon the stage naturally made him a subject for discussion which temporarily over-shadowed even Mrs. Hobbs' baby.

      "I'm told he's a sort of a farmer," said one.

      "He's a shearer; I had it from Mrs. Phillips herself," said another.

      "He's a strapping man, whatever he is," commented a third.

      "Well, she's a big lump of a girl, too," contributed a fourth.

      "Yes, and a vixen with her tongue when she gets started, for all her prim looks," added a fifth.

      "She has tricky ways that get over the men-folks. Mine won't hear a word against her." This from the third speaker, eager to be with the tide, evidently setting towards unfavorable criticism.

      "I don't know," objected the second, timidly. "She sat up all night with my Maggie once, when she had the fever, and Nellie had to work next day, too."

      "Oh, she's got her good side," retorted the fifth, opening her dress to feed her nursing baby with absolute indifference for all onlookers. "But she knows a great deal too much for a girl of her age. When she gets married will be time enough to talk as she does sometimes." The chorus of approving murmurs showed that Nellie had spoken plainly enough on some subjects to displease some of these slatternly matrons.

      "She stays out till all hours, I'm told," one slanderer said.

      "She's a union girl, at any rate," hazarded Nellie's timid defender. There was an awkward pause at this. It was an apple of discord with the women, evidently. A tall form turning the corner afforded further reason for changing the subject.

      "Here's Mrs. Macanany," announced one. "You'd better not say anything against Nellie Lawton when she's about." So they talked again of Mrs. Hobbs' baby, making it the excuse to leave undone for a few minutes the endless work of the poor man's wife.

      And sad to tell when, a few minutes afterwards, Ned and Nellie came out again and walked off together, the group of gossipers unanimously endorsed Mrs. Macanany's extravagant praises, and agreed entirely with her declaration that if all the women in Sydney would only stand by Nellie, as Mrs. Macanany herself would, there would be such a doing and such an upsetting and such a righting of things that ever after every man would be his own master and every woman would only work eight hours and get well paid for it. Yet it was something that of six women there were two who wouldn't slander a girl like Nellie behind her back.

CHAPTER II.

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      SWEATING IN THE SYDNEY SLUMS.

      "Well! Where shall we go, Nellie?" began Ned jauntily, as they walked away together. To tell the truth he was eager to get away from this poor neighborhood. It had saddened him, made him feel unhappy, caused in him a longing to be back again in the bush, on his horse, a hundred miles from everybody. "Shall we go to Manly or Bondi or Watson's Bay, or do you know of a better place?" He had been reading the newspaper advertisements and had made enquiries of the waitress, as he ate his breakfast, concerning the spot which the waitress would prefer were a young man going to take her out for the day. He felt pleased with himself now, for not only did he like Nellie very much but she was attractive to behold, and he felt very certain that every man they passed envied him. She had put on a little round straw hat, black, trimmed with dark purple velvet; in her hands, enclosed in black gloves, she carried a parasol of the same colour.

      "Where would you like to go, Ned?" she answered, colouring a little as she heard her name in Mrs. Macanany's hoarse voice, being told thereby that she and Ned were the topic of conversation among the jury of matrons assembled opposite.

      "Anywhere you like, Nellie."

      "Don't you think, Ned, that you might see a little bit of real Sydney? Strangers come here for a few days and go on the steamers and through the gardens and along George-street and then go away with a notion of the place that isn't the true one. If I were you, Ned, right from the bush and knowing nothing of towns, I'd like to see a bit of the real side and not only the show side that everybody sees. We don't all go picnicking all the time and we don't all live by the harbour or alongside the Domain."

      "Do just whatever you like, Nellie," cried Ned, hardly understanding but perfectly satisfied, "you know best where to take a fellow."

      "But they're not pleasant places, Ned."

      "I don't mind," answered Ned, lightly, though he had been looking forward, rather, to the quiet enjoyment of a trip on a harbour steamer, or at least to the delight of a long ramble along some beach where he thought he and Nellie might pick up shells. "Besides, I fancy it's going to rain before night," he added, looking up at the sky, of which a long narrow slice showed between the tall rows of houses.

      There were no clouds visible. Only there was a deepening grey in the hard blueness above them, and the breathless heat, even at this time of day, was stifling.

      "I don't know that you'd call this a pleasant place," he commented, adding with the frankness of an old friend: "Why do you live here, Nellie?"

      She shrugged her shoulders. The gesture meant anything and everything.

      "You needn't have bothered sending me that money back," said Ned, in reply to the shrug.

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