(I must tell you about her some other time; James was `shook after her'),
and we got talkin' about Mrs Spicer. Maggie was very warm about old Wall.
`I expected Mrs Spicer up to-day,' said Mary. `She seems better lately.'
`Why!' cried Maggie Charlsworth, `if that ain't Annie coming
running up
along the creek. Something's the matter!'
We all jumped up and ran out.
`What is it, Annie?' cried Mary.
`Oh, Mrs Wilson! Mother's asleep, and we can't wake her!'
`What?'
`It's -- it's the truth, Mrs Wilson.'
`How long has she been asleep?'
`Since lars' night.'
`My God!' cried Mary, `SINCE LAST NIGHT?'
`No, Mrs Wilson, not all the time; she woke wonst, about daylight
this mornin'. She called me and said she didn't feel well,
and I'd have to manage the milkin'.'
`Was that all she said?'
`No. She said not to go for you; and she said to feed the pigs and calves;
and she said to be sure and water them geraniums.'
Mary wanted to go, but I wouldn't let her. James and I saddled our horses
and rode down the creek.
. . . . .
Mrs Spicer looked very little different from what she did
when I last saw her alive. It was some time before we could believe
that she was dead. But she was `past carin'' right enough.
A Double Buggy at Lahey's Creek.
I. Spuds, and a Woman's Obstinacy.
Ever since we were married it had been Mary's great
ambition to have a buggy.
The house or furniture didn't matter so much -- out there in the Bush
where we were -- but, where there were no railways or coaches, and the roads
were long, and
mostly hot and dusty, a buggy was the great thing.
I had a few pounds when we were married, and was going to get one then;
but new buggies went high, and another party got hold of a
second-hand one
that I'd had my eye on, so Mary thought it over and at last she said,
`Never mind the buggy, Joe; get a sewing-machine and I'll be satisfied.
I'll want the machine more than the buggy, for a while.
Wait till we're better off.'
After that,
whenever I took a contract -- to put up a fence or wool-shed,
or sink a dam or something -- Mary would say, `You ought to knock a buggy
out of this job, Joe;' but something always turned up --
bad weather or
sickness. Once I cut my foot with the adze and was laid up;
and, another time, a dam I was making was washed away by a flood
before I finished it. Then Mary would say, `Ah, well -- never mind, Joe.
Wait till we are better off.' But she felt it hard the time
I built a wool-shed and didn't get paid for it, for we'd as good as settled
about another
second-hand buggy then.
I always had a fancy for carpentering, and was handy with tools.
I made a spring-cart -- body and wheels -- in spare time,
out of
colonial hardwood, and got Little the
blacksmith to do the ironwork;
I painted the cart myself. It wasn't much lighter than one of the tip-drays
I had, but it WAS a spring-cart, and Mary pretended to be satisfied with it:
anyway, I didn't hear any more of the buggy for a while.
I sold that cart, for fourteen pounds, to a Chinese gardener
who wanted a strong cart to carry his vegetables round through the Bush.
It was just before our first
youngster came: I told Mary
that I wanted the money in case of extra expense -- and she didn't fret much
at losing that cart. But the fact was, that I was going to make another try
for a buggy, as a present for Mary when the child was born.
I thought of getting the turn-out while she was laid up,
keeping it dark from her till she was on her feet again,
and then showing her the buggy
standing in the shed. But she had a bad time,
and I had to have the doctor
regularly, and get a proper nurse,
and a lot of things extra; so the buggy idea was knocked on the head.
I was set on it, too: I'd thought of how, when Mary was up
and getting strong, I'd say one morning, `Go round and have a look
in the shed, Mary; I've got a few fowls for you,' or something like that --
and follow her round to watch her eyes when she saw the buggy.
I never told Mary about that -- it wouldn't have done any good.
Later on I got some good
timber --
mostly scraps that were given to me --
and made a light body for a spring-cart. Galletly, the coach-builder
at Cudgeegong, had got a dozen pairs of American
hickory wheels
up from Sydney, for light spring-carts, and he let me have a pair
for cost price and
carriage. I got him to iron the cart,
and he put it through the paint-shop for nothing. He sent it out, too,
at the tail of Tom Tarrant's big van -- to increase the surprise.
We were swells then for a while; I heard no more of a buggy
until after we'd been settled at Lahey's Creek for a couple of years.
I told you how I went into the carrying line, and took up a
selectionat Lahey's Creek -- for a run for the horses and to grow a bit of feed --
and shifted Mary and little Jim out there from Gulgong,
with Mary's young scamp of a brother James to keep them company
while I was on the road. The first year I did well enough carrying,
but I never cared for it -- it was too slow; and, besides,
I was always
anxious when I was away from home. The game was right enough
for a single man -- or a married one whose wife had got the nagging habit
(as many Bushwomen have -- God help 'em!), and who wanted
peace and quietness sometimes. Besides, other small carriers started
(seeing me getting on); and Tom Tarrant, the coach-driver at Cudgeegong,
had another heavy spring-van built, and put it on the roads,
and he took a lot of the light stuff.
The second year I made a rise -- out of `spuds', of all the things
in the world. It was Mary's idea. Down at the lower end of our
selection --
Mary called it `the run' -- was a
shallow watercourse called Snake's Creek,
dry most of the year, except for a muddy water-hole or two;
and, just above the
junction, where it ran into Lahey's Creek,
was a low piece of good black-soil flat, on our side -- about three acres.
The flat was fairly clear when I came to the
selection --
save for a few logs that had been washed up there in some big `old man' flood,
way back in black-fellows' times; and one day, when I had a spell at home,
I got the horses and trace-chains and dragged the logs together --
those that wouldn't split for
fencingtimber -- and burnt them off.
I had a notion to get the flat
ploughed and make a lucern-paddock of it.
There was a good water-hole, under a clump of she-oak in the bend,
and Mary used to take her stools and tubs and
boiler down there
in the spring-cart in hot weather, and wash the clothes
under the shade of the trees -- it was cooler, and saved carrying water
to the house. And one evening after she'd done the washing she said to me --
`Look here, Joe; the farmers out here never seem to get a new idea:
they don't seem to me ever to try and find out beforehand
what the market is going to be like -- they just go on farming
the same old way and putting in the same old crops year after year.
They sow wheat, and, if it comes on anything like the thing,
they reap and thresh it; if it doesn't, they mow it for hay --
and some of 'em don't have the brains to do that in time.
Now, I was looking at that bit of flat you cleared, and it struck me
that it wouldn't be a half bad idea to get a bag of seed-potatoes,
and have the land
ploughed -- old Corny George would do it cheap --
and get them put in at once. Potatoes have been dear all round
for the last couple of years.'
I told her she was talking
nonsense, that the ground was no good for potatoes,
and the whole district was too dry. `Everybody I know has tried it,
one time or another, and made nothing of it,' I said.
`All the more reason why you should try it, Joe,' said Mary.
`Just try one crop. It might rain for weeks, and then you'll be sorry
you didn't take my advice.'
`But I tell you the ground is not potato-ground,' I said.
`How do you know? You haven't sown any there yet.'
`But I've turned up the surface and looked at it. It's not rich enough,
and too dry, I tell you. You need swampy, boggy ground for potatoes.
Do you think I don't know land when I see it?'
`But you haven't TRIED to grow potatoes there yet, Joe.
How do you know ----'
I didn't listen to any more. Mary was
obstinate when she got an idea
into her head. It was no use arguing with her. All the time I'd be talking
she'd just knit her
forehead and go on thinking straight ahead,
on the track she'd started, -- just as if I wasn't there, --
and it used to make me mad. She'd keep driving at me till I took her advice
or lost my
temper, -- I did both at the same time,
mostly.
I took my pipe and went out to smoke and cool down.
A couple of days after the potato
breeze, I started with the team
down to Cudgeegong for a load of
fencing-wire I had to bring out;
and after I'd kissed Mary good-bye, she said --
`Look here, Joe, if you bring out a bag of seed-potatoes,
James and I will slice them, and old Corny George down the creek
would bring his
plough up in the dray and
plough the ground for very little.
We could put the potatoes in ourselves if the ground were only
ploughed.'
I thought she'd forgotten all about it. There was no time to argue --
I'd be sure to lose my
temper, and then I'd either have to waste an hour
comforting Mary or go off in a `huff', as the women call it,
and be
miserable for the trip. So I said I'd see about it. She gave me
another hug and a kiss. `Don't forget, Joe,' she said as I started.
`Think it over on the road.' I
reckon she had the best of it that time.
About five miles along, just as I turned into the main road,
I heard some one galloping after me, and I saw young James on his hack.
I got a start, for I thought that something had gone wrong at home.
I remember, the first day I left Mary on the creek, for the first
five or six miles I was half-a-dozen times on the point of turning back --
only I thought she'd laugh at me.
`What is it, James?' I shouted, before he came up -- but I saw
he was grinning.
`Mary says to tell you not to forget to bring a hoe out with you.'
`You clear off home!' I said, `or I'll lay the whip about your young hide;
and don't come riding after me again as if the run was on fire.'
`Well, you needn't get shirty with me!' he said. `*I* don't want to have
anything to do with a hoe.' And he rode off.
I DID get thinking about those potatoes, though I hadn't meant to.
I knew of an independent man in that district who'd made his money
out of a crop of potatoes; but that was away back in the roaring 'Fifties
-- '54 -- when spuds went up to twenty-eight shillings a hundredweight
(in Sydney), on
account of the gold rush. We might get good rain now,
and, anyway, it wouldn't cost much to put the potatoes in.
If they came on well, it would be a few pounds in my pocket;
if the crop was a
failure, I'd have a better show with Mary
next time she was struck by an idea outside housekeeping,
and have something to
grumble about when I felt grumpy.
I got a couple of bags of potatoes -- we could use those that were left over;
and I got a small iron
plough and a
harrow that Little the
blacksmithhad lying in his yard and let me have cheap -- only about a pound more
than I told Mary I gave for them. When I took advice, I generally made
the mistake of
taking more than was offered, or adding notions of my own.
It was
vanity, I suppose. If the crop came on well I could claim
the
plough-and-
harrow part of the idea, anyway. (It didn't strike me
that if the crop failed Mary would have the
plough and
harrow against me,
for old Corny would
plough the ground for ten or fifteen shillings.)
Anyway, I'd want a
plough and
harrow later on, and I might as well get it now;
it would give James something to do.
I came out by the
western road, by Guntawang, and up the creek home;
and the first thing I saw was old Corny George
ploughing the flat.
And Mary was down on the bank superintending. She'd got James
with the trace-chains and the spare horses, and had made him clear off
every stick and bush where another
furrow might be squeezed in.
Old Corny looked pretty grumpy on it -- he'd broken all his
ploughshares
but one, in the roots; and James didn't look much brighter.
Mary had an old felt hat and a new pair of 'lastic-side boots of mine on,
and the boots were covered with clay, for she'd been down hustling James
to get a
rotten old stump out of the way by the time Corny came round
with his next
furrow.
`I thought I'd make the boots easy for you, Joe,' said Mary.
`It's all right, Mary,' I said. `I'm not going to growl.' Those boots
were a bone of
contention between us; but she generally got them off
before I got home.