"I reckon that's about his figure. But he's an eyesore to me, loafin', loafin'. An' he's an eyesore to Ma, save for the bit he teaches Lennie. An' when he starts talkin' on the high fiddle, like he does to Mary the minute she comes down, makes you want to walk on his face."
Poor Rackett! Jack marvelled that Tom had always been so civil.
The two jogged along very amicably together. Tom was hail-fellow-well-met with everybody. At the same time, he was in his own estimation a gentleman, and a person of consideration. It was "thus far" with him.
But whoever came along, they all drew up.
"Hello, mate! How's goin'? . . . Well, so long!"
One youth was walking to Fremantle to take a job offered by his uncle, serving in a grocery shop. The lad was in tatters. His blanket was tied with twine, his battered billy hung on to it. But he was jubilant. And now he is one of Australia's leading lights. Even it is said of him that he never forgot the kindness he received on the road.
But most of the trailers were sundowners, sloping along anyhow, subsisting anyhow, but ready with the ingenious explanation that they "chopped a bit," or "fenced a bit," or "trapped a bit." Perhaps they never realised how much bigger was the bit they loafed.
They were not bad. The bad ones were the scoundrels down from the Never-Never, emerging in their rags and moral degradation after years on the sheep runs or cattle stations, years of earnings spent in drink and squalid, beastly debauchery. Some were hoarding their cheques for coast-town consumption, like the first two rogues, and cadging and stealing their way.
But then there were families driving to the nearest settlement to do a bit of shopping, or visit their relations, or fetch the doctor to "fix up Teddy's little leg." Once there was a posse of mounted police, very important and gallant, with horses champing and chains clinking. They were out after a criminal supposed to have been landed on the coast by a dago boat "from the other side." Then there was an occasional Minister of the Gospel, on a pony, dressed in black. Jack's heart always sank when he saw that black. He decided that priests should be white, or in orange robes, like the Buddhist priests he had seen in Colombo, or in a good blue, like some nuns.
Gradually the road became a home: more a home than any homestead.