“The best part o’ two mouths, Harry.”
“Ay, Johnnie, and all that time Bob there helped the farmer—dug for him, trenched and fenced, and all for my sake, and to keep the life in my Cockney skin.”
“Well, Harry,” said Bob, “you proved your worth after we got up. You hardened down fine after that fever.”
Harry turned towards Archie.
“You mustn’t believe all Bob says, Johnnie, when he speaks about me. Bob is a good-natured, silly sort of a chap; and though he has a beard now, he ain’t got more ’n ’alf the lime-juice squeezed out of him yet.”
“Never mind, Bob,” said Archie, “even limes and lemons should not be squeezed dry. You and I are country lads, and we would rather retain a shade of greenness than otherwise; but go on, Bob.”
“Well, now,” continued Bob, “I don’t know that Harry’s fever didn’t do us both good in the long run; for when we started at last for the interior, we met a good lot of the rush coming back. There was no fear of losing the tracks. That was one good thing that came o’ Harry’s fever. Another was, that it kind o’ tightened his constitution. La! he could come through anything after that—get wet to the skin and dry again; lie out under a tree or under the dews o’ heaven, and never complain of stiffness; and eat corn beef and damper as much as you’d like to put before him; and he never seemed to tire. As for me, you know, Archie, I’m an old bush bird. I was brought up in the woods and wilds; and, faith, I’m never so much at home as I am in the forests. Not but what we found the march inland wearisome enough. Worst of it was, we had no horses, and we had to do a lot of what you might call good honest begging; but if the squatters did give us food going up, we were willing to work for it.”
“If they’d let us, Bob.”
“Which they didn’t. Hospitality and religion go hand in hand with the squatter. When I and Harry here set out on that terribly long march, I confess to both of ye now I didn’t feel at all certain as to how anything at all would turn out. I was just as bad as the young bear when its mother put it down and told it to walk. The bear said, ‘All right, mother; but how is it done?’ And as the mother only answered by a grunt, the young bear had to do the best it could; and so did we.
“‘How is it going to end?’ I often said to Harry.