“No, sir. Nuggety Joe never called me anything else than Tim.”
“And who is Nuggety Joe?” asked the farmer.
The boy played nervously with the edge of his tattered jacket for a moment, and then replied in a voice broken and unsteady with emotion, “Please, sir, father and Joe were mates on the diggings at Forbes. When the great dam broke and flooded the creek, and drowned father, mother, and little sister Jessie, Joe took care of me, and was a father to me—he was—until [[75]]he took the fever, and died, and then I——” The child’s quavering voice gave way to a fit of bitter wailing.
“Stop that!” cried the farmer, putting his handkerchief to his nose, and making that organ sound like a French horn—“stop it at once. I’ll have no snivelling here.”
But poor Tim sobbed on; and notwithstanding all the womanly sympathy of the farmer’s wife, she could not stay the torrent. Not yet in his “teens,” the brave lad walked over two hundred miles, suffering hunger and pain with the courage of a Spartan; but he had no courage to put back the tears that swelled upwards at the remembrance of that rude, unlettered, dead digger, who had loved him, and had taken him to his bosom for Christ’s sake, and who had now gone to receive his reward.
All things have an end, so the fountain of Tim’s eyes became dry again ere the tea was over. Before the lad was sent to bed, the farmer said, “Look here, boy, I think I can give you something to do on my farm. Mind, I’ll set you a task the first thing in the morning; if you perform it to my satisfaction, and you likewise prove yourself an honest, trustworthy youngster, why, you shall never want a home or a friend [[76]]while Mark Wilson lives. Now, wife, put him to bed.”
The good dame led Tim to a small attic bedroom, which contained, amongst other things, a beautiful parrot in a stout wire cage.
“Cockie” had evidently been enjoying a nap, for he shook himself at sight of the intruders, and sent forth from his bill a volley of strange sounds, in true imitation of a person just aroused from slumber. Mrs. Wilson kissed our hero and retired, but she had hardly closed the door before the bird began to flap his wings and crow like a rooster.
“A funny parrot,” muttered Tim. “I wonder if it can talk?”
“Of course it can,” answered Cockie, eyeing him through the bars of the cage. The lad rubbed his eyes, and stared at the bird in the cage for fully three minutes without speaking a word, so great was his consternation. “Don’t stare, Tim; it’s very rude to stare,” continued the bird gravely. “People in this colony have a bad habit of staring you out of countenance, I am sorry to say.”