"Eh, hark ye! How like old master over again! Ye've come, haven't ye?"
"By accident," said Jack. "I'm not Mr. Grant's nephew."
"Hark ye! Hark ye! It runs in the family, father to son, uncle to nephew. All right! All right! Have it your own way," cried Amos. He had been struggling with crazy contradictions too long.
Tom was in convulsions. Rackett put his hand on Jack's shoulder. "It's all right," he said. "Don't worry him. Leave it to me." And to the woman he said, if there was no ink she was to kill a fowl and bring it to him, and he'd make ink with lamp-black and gall.
"You two boys had better be off to bed," he said. "You have to be off in good time in the morning."
"Oh, not going, not going so soon, surely! The young master's not going so soon! Surely! Surely! Master's so weak in the head and stomach, we can't cope with him all by ourselves," cried the old man and woman.
"Perhaps I'll stay," said Rackett. "And Jack will come back one day, don't you worry. Now let me make that ink."
The boys were shown into a large, low room—the fourth room of the house—that opened off the kitchen. It contained a big bed with clean sheets and white crochet quilt. Jack surmised it was the old couple's bed, and wanted to go to the barn. But Tom said, since they offered it, there was nothing to do but to take it.
Tom was soon snoring. Jack lay in the great feather bed feeling that life was all going crazy. Tom was already snoring. He cared about nothing. Out of sight, out of mind. But Jack had a fit of remembering. His head was hot, and he could not sleep. The wind was blowing, it was raining again. He could not sleep, he had to remember.
It was always so with him. He could go on careless and unheeding, like Tom, for a while. Then came these fits of reckoning and remembering. Life seemed unhinged in Australia. In England there was a strong central pivot to all the living. But here the centre pin was gone, and the lives seemed to spin in a weird confusion.