"Nor more it would if I lived by gents a-stopping at my house; for I don't get one of 'em a month. But you see them as pays me is the sawyers; there are lots of 'em about these parts, cutting timber on the hills and in the scrubs; and when they get their logs down into the river they mostly stop here a while drinking before they raft the timber over the flats on their way down to the mills. Then when they come back they generally stop a while on the spree before they go to work. So, you see, I makes a pretty good thing out of 'em; besides you see I keeps rations here as well as grog, and sell them to the fellers when they run short and ain't got no money."
"But don't you often lose your money? I suppose they have none when they go to town with their rafts, and very little when they come back; that is even if they ever do come back; then I suppose you lose your score."
"Oh, I manage to get it; precious few ever 'bilk' me, for I know my marks pretty well, and them as I fancy won't come back I get to pay me in timber; and I brand the logs with my own brand, and give some of the fellers I can trust so much a hundred feet to raft them down for me. But mostly the chaps come back before they have spree'd away all their money. So I gets my share, as they pay me then what they owe me, and have another go in until they 'knock down their pile.'"
"And how much do their 'piles' consist of?"
"Well, I couldn't say anything regular. I have had as much as a hundred pounds 'knocked down' by one man at a time." And as the man said this he smiled and heaved a sigh that seemed to say those were prosperous times for him. True enough it was that he had had as large a sum of money paid to him by one man; but as to the amount being actually spent, or an equivalent even in liquor supplied, is extremely doubtful; but to follow them in their conversation, Tom remarked:
"And then they return to their work, I suppose, quite penniless?"
"Oh, yes, it is very few of them ever have any money when they get back to the scrubs; they have no use for it there, so they spend it like men."
"Like fools you mean."
"No I don't. What is the use of the poor man saving his money? he can't do anything with it; he can't buy any land to settle on; and he doesn't care to save up his money to be robbed of it or lose it; he works hard enough to get it, and so likes to spend it himself."
"That is certainly one idea why working men should spend their hard-got earnings. I should have imagined that men who had laboured hard, and were living in the bush and scrubs in all sorts of discomfort, would have had some desire to better their condition, and would have accumulated means accordingly."