Claude listens with a tear of sympathy in his eyes as the boy aged ten tells how he has “runned hisself two year,” and mostly “sleeps out er nights” by the Circular Quay. And how he would like to go to school, but has not a coat to go in, nor a threepence a week to spare to invest in education. Then the children get fidgety, and the dark-eyed, kind-hearted shop-woman, with true feminine intuitiveness, whispers to Claude that they “want to join their mates.” And so off they go, each gravely saying, “Thank ye, sir,” and each pocketing his shilling in his capacious mouth, but neither showing any capability of pleasure nor of gratification. Claude wishes them “good-night,” and finishes up the evening with a visit to the Circular Quay at twelve o’clock, and there finds a solitary policeman standing under one of the wonderful electric lights, who shows him where to look for the newsboys sleeping out.
“But don’t you go a-questioning of ’em, hif you don’t want to get mobbed by them blessed larrikins,” was the constable’s last good-night.
Not much hunting is required. Down amongst the cases, the barrels, the timber, and the great iron water-pipes, Claude counts over ninety boys camping out. He wisely follows the policeman’s advice, however, and does not disturb their slumbers, and goes home more puzzled with Sydney than ever.
CHAPTER VII.
MESSRS. WINZE AND CLINSKEEN.
“So shines a good deed in a naughty world.”
HE firm of Messrs. Winze and Clinskeen, Mining and Stock Agents, of Pitt Street, Sydney, is known as well, if not better, in “outside” wilds as even in Sydney. The establishment is one of those remarkable outcomes of Australian push and enterprise that are to be found in these colonies and nowhere else in the world. The office before us is the focussing-point of two great fields of operations,—mining and stock-raising. In the ground-glass case in the office—dedicated, as a black letter notice on the door informs us, to Mr. Clinskeen, the station-business partner—a subtle brain is directing the business affairs of fifty large stations a thousand miles away, comprising a total area of perhaps 50,000 square miles. Any hour of the day you may drop in at the office, and you are sure to find somebody from the “Far North” closeted with the keen-eyed, courteous, military-looking old gentleman and his shorthand clerk in the little glass case aforesaid. Tall, slim, darkly-bronzed men, in well-cut clothes and be-puggeried light-felt hats, come there and drawl out their ideas about “fats,” stores, capital, artesian-bores, and the like, whiffing long cigars meanwhile, and everlastingly “nipping” from the decanter of “three star” upon the table. One of these bowed out, perhaps the “boss-drover” of a mob (herd) of fat cows, which has lately arrived from the north in Sydney, enters, with his dirty, rough, cabbage-tree hat in his hand. He has a jolly, brown-red face, and has come to get his “accounts squared up.” He is a bit “breezy” just now, for he has already begun to “knock down his cheque” (spend his money); but he sobers up under the keen “no nonsense” glance of Mr. Clinskeen in little less than no time. He is not quite happy, to tell the truth, about these same accounts. Thoughts will enter his head about that beast that disappeared mysteriously about the time he had to wait with his cattle near Swindle’s grog-shanty, at Parakelia Creek, for five days, whilst his black boys tracked some of his pack-horses that had wandered away. His mind is not quite easy either about his enormous butcher’s bill; for Mr. Clinskeen knows something about the awkward mistakes that will arise sometimes with drovers, in mixing up their own private grog account with the “rations expenses’ list.” However he has got down with only a loss of one and a half per cent. of his “O. B. Fours,” and his business being soon dispatched to his satisfaction, he goes away as contented as may be. Jew money-lenders, hydraulic engineers, stock-inspectors, patentees of “ear-marking” machines, come and go, and then more squatters. The flow of business through that little glass office is never ceasing.
On the opposite side of the clerk’s outside office is Mr. Winze’s special apartment. “His claim,” he calls it, for he it is that conducts the mining part of the affairs of the firm, and he is thoroughly professional in speech as well as action. Born a “Cousin Jack” (a Cornishman); working for his living when nine years old in the submarine levels of a great, rambling tin mine on the ragged sea-front of the Old-land; educating himself by the light of flaring tallow-dips, whilst the moisture of the mine walls fell upon his book; the noisy man-engine creaking mournfully by his side, and the sea roaring far up above his head, he has fought his way through life; and, by means of Australian gold fields and Cornish pluck, is now one of the wealthiest and most respected of Sydney’s citizens. He does not see so many visitors in his little sanctuary as his business-brother Mr. Clinskeen does, over the way; but it is through his far-sightedness and practical knowledge of mining that the firm has amassed the capital that his partner can lend to such advantage to their run-holding clients. Mr. Winze is sitting, as our curtain rises, at his paper-strewn table. He is a powerful-looking, squarely-built, elderly gentleman, with magnificent, dark-brown eyes, and well-formed head covered with thick iron-grey hair. The expression of his face shows that much of the youthful fire remains; and although over sixty years of age, he is really younger in many respects than some of the town-bred, thirty-five-year-old clerks in his own office. By the side of the mining partner is an open iron deed-box, from which he takes several pink-ribboned bundles of papers. He reads rapidly through some of them, glances at others, taking notes meanwhile; then, glancing at a clock upon the wall opposite, turns towards the corner of the room where his lady type-writer is seated, and informs her, with a kindly smile, that he will not require her presence till three o’clock. Left to himself, he stretches himself, and letting his gold pince-nez fall upon his broad chest, with a shake of his head, proceeds to fill and light his “thinking pipe,” as he calls it.
“Disengaged, sir?” at this instant says a red-headed clerk, opening the door after first knocking on the glass. “Mr. Angland, sir.”