Robbery Under Arms by Rolf Boldrewood (epub read online books TXT) 📕

that, as I said before, he’d been made a magistrate, and all the swells began to take notice of him⁠—not altogether because he’d made money either; what I call the real swells, as far as I see, won’t do that. If they don’t care for a man⁠—no matter how much money he’s made⁠—they hold shy of him. But if he’s a straight-going good sort of fellow, that has his head screwed on the right way, and don’t push himself forward too much, they’ll meet him halfway, and a very good thing too.

We could see George was going upwards and out of our lot, beginning to mix with different people and get different notions⁠—not but what he was always kind and friendly in his way to Aileen and mother, and would have been to us if he’d ever seen us. But all his new friends were different kind of people, and after a bit, Aileen said, we’d only be remembered as people he’d known when he was young, and soon, when the old lady died, we’d be asked into the kitchen and not into the parlour. Aileen used to laugh when she talked like this, and say she’d come and see George when he’d married a lady, and what fun it would be to remind Gracey of the time they threshed the oats out together at Rocky Flat. But still, laugh and all, I could see, though she talked that way, it made her feel wretched all the while, because she couldn’t help thinking that we ought to have done just as well as George, and might have been nigh-hand as far forward if we’d kept straight. If we’d only kept straight! Ah, there was where the whole mistake lay.

It often seems to me as if men and women ought to have two lives⁠—an old one and a new one⁠—one to repent of the other; the first one to show men what they ought to keep clear of in the second. When you think how foolish-like and childish man or woman commits their first fault, not so bad in itself, but enough often to shut them out from nearly all their chances of good in this world, it does seem hardish that one life should end all under the sun. Of course, there’s the other, and we don’t know what’s coming, but there’s so many different notions about that a chap like me gets puzzled, and looks on it as out of his line altogether.

We weren’t sorry to have a little excuse to stop quiet at home for this month. We couldn’t have done no good by mooching about, and ten to one, while the chase was so hot after all that were supposed to have had a hand in rubbing out Hagan and his lot, we should have been dropped upon. The whole country was alive with scouting parties, as well as the regulars. You’d have thought the end of the world was come. Father couldn’t have done a better thing for himself and all of us than get hit as he did. It kept him and us out of harm’s way, and put them off the scent, while they hunted Moran and Burke and the rest of their lot for their lives. They could hardly get a bit of damper out of a shepherd’s hut without it being known to the police, and many a time they got off by the skin of their teeth.

XLIII

At last father got well, and said he didn’t see what good Aileen could do stopping any longer in the Hollow, unless she meant to follow up bushranging for a living. She’d better go back and stay along with her mother. If George Storefield liked to have ’em there, well and good; things looked as if it wasn’t safe now for a man’s wife and daughter, and if he’d got into trouble, to live peaceable and quiet in their own house. He didn’t think they need be afraid of anyone interfering with them for the future, though. Here dad looked so dark that Aileen began to think he was going to be ill again. We’d all start and go a bit of the way with her next day⁠—to the old stockyard or a bit farther; she could ride from there, and take the horse back with her and keep him if she liked.

“You’ve been a good gal to me,” he says to her; “you always was one; and your mother’s been a good woman and a good wife; tell her I said so. I’d no call to have done the things I have, or left home because it wasn’t tidy and clean and a welcome always when I came back. It’s been rough on her, and on you too, my gal; and if it’ll do her any good, tell her I’m dashed sorry. You can take this trifle of money. You needn’t boggle at it; it’s honest got and earned, long before this other racket. Now you can go. Kiss your old dad; like as not you won’t see him again.”

We’d got the horses in. I lifted her up on to the saddle, and she rode out. Her horse was all on the square, so there was no harm in her taking him back with her, and off we went. Dad didn’t go after all. We took it easy out to the old stockyard. We meant to camp there for half-an-hour, and then to send her on, with Warrigal to keep with her and show her the way home.

We didn’t want to make the time too short. What a lovely day it was! The mountain sides were clogged up with mist for an hour after we started; still, anyone that knew the climate would have said it was going to be a fine day. There wasn’t a breath of air; everything was that still that not a leaf on any of the trees so much as stirred.

When we