"Just what was bothering me," cried Jack, who was at that moment burying his teeth in a juicy steak. "I was saying to myself a little while ago that it seemed as if this wouldn't be a one-day affair, and I was bothering to let the wife know. Not that I'm going back till the matter's finished. Not much—this is a duty."
"You've put it fair and square," agreed Peter, with flushing face. "This here are a duty, sure. Out in the settlements there ain't so many cases of murder and theft. A man soon gets known, seeing as there's so few of us, and mostly in settlements close together; and ef he's a bad man—why, out he goes sooner or later. But bad men mostly gets into the towns. There's a sight of 'em always hanging about the saloons, and so on. Some of 'em make a regular business of watching out fer green 'uns, fellers just out from home; and mostly the rogues strip the poor chaps of every dollar. They're up to all sorts of tricks. Most like they'll pretend to have land to sell, ready-made farms, you might say. The bad man is Canada's curse, jest that and nothing less; and reckon not a few of 'em is the relics of the wasters and the wont-works who was sent out here long ago from the Old Country, to get 'em out of the way or to give 'em a new chance."
"In fact, just the class that modern-day Canada is determined not to have," chimed in George. "And one can't blame the Government. In future, jailbirds won't be sent direct to the Dominion instead of to prison, simply because they'll be turned back at the ports; just the same as folks with obvious disease of the lungs will be turned back. But you can pass me along another of those steaks, Tom; and don't go on looking at 'em like that. Pitch in at them, my boy. There's enough there and to spare fer everybody."
Tom had indeed been eyeing the frizzling steaks somewhat hungrily, and, if the truth had but been known, it was only from force of habit. Hurley had been very much the master. His apprentice had put up with short fare and many blows.
"How was it you was put with him, lad?" asked Peter, when he had finished his meal and had lit up a pipe preparatory to his setting out for the railway. "Surely the folks who put you there hadn't met Hurley?"
Tom shook his head emphatically. "They'd never seen him," he said. "My uncle wished me to come out from England, and saw an advertisement offering to take a lad for a premium. He paid the money and I came, only to find that I was a sort of slave."
"Huh!" growled Peter. "Jest what I thought. That's another turn the bad man gets up to. But boys ain't always treated same as that. I've had 'em meself, and know others who've taken lads. The Barnardo Boys' Home sends a goodish lot out to Canada and places them out on the farms. But, bless you! they ain't finished with 'em by a long bit, and rightly so. There's inspectors who go round and make surprise visits, and if they find that a boy isn't getting fair and square and liberal treatment, why, away he's taken, and put somewhere else. And the result is that we're bringing up in Canada a heap of young chaps who come out jest at the very right age, when they ain't yet learned any farming and when their minds is—wall, now, what are the term?"
"Receptive," cried Jack, who was quite a scholar. "The young, untutored mind is readily receptive."
"Put it like that," agreed Peter, who was a wonderfully talkative and jolly fellow. "The kids learn, and ain't got no bad tricks to unlearn. Folks has got to set great store by 'em, for they're likely obedient lads, and there's more demands for 'em than there's boys. They get looked after. There ain't no bullyin' and half-starving same as in Tom's case. What's more, farmers is willing and eager to pay 'em wages and keep 'em, and not jest have their work for nothing, and a handsome premium into the bargain. That 'ere Hurley's a bad hat."
He knocked the ashes out of his pipe, leaped to his feet, and swung his leg over his horse. Without troubling to put a saddle on the beast, he hitched the rein free from the tree and went off whistling.