[198]
]For a time, busy with a batch of bread, the former took no notice of the stranger. Then, his work done, he came and looked over his shoulder, saying, ‘What you got there, mate?’
‘Finest thing ever you read,’ said the other, carelessly turning over some vivid pictures. “The Life and Adventures of Dick Turpin, Claude Duval, and Other Eminent Outlaws.” Something like a book this is,’ he continued. ‘Six hundred pages full of love and murder; and that excitin’ you can’t bear to put it down!’
This was charming; and the cook, and the butcher, and a couple of boundary riders dropped in for a yarn, at once became inquisitive, and anxious to have a look.
‘See here,’ said the owner of the wonderful volume, pointing to an outrageous effort in coloured process, ‘this is the bold Dick Turpin on his wonderful mare, Black Bess, taking the ten-foot gate on the road to York. See, he’s got the reins in his teeth and a pistol in each hand.’
‘By gum, she’s a flyer!’ ‘Twig the long-necked spurs.’ ‘No knee-pads to the saddle either!’ ‘Ten foot! there ain’t a horse in Hostralia as could do it!’—exclaimed his audience, becoming excited.
‘And here you have,’ went on the traveller, ‘
the gentle highwayman, Claude Duval, stickin’ up the Duke of York’s coach on ’Oundslow ’Eath. And here he is again, dancing under the moon with the Duchess.’ And so he continued, setting forth in tempting sequence the [199] ]glories of the work, pausing at intervals to read aloud thrilling bits, and comment upon them.
‘Where did you get it, mate?’ at length asked the cook.
‘Bought it in Atlanta,’ replied the other. ‘Fellow there’s got lots of ’em, and only thirty bob apiece. Cheap at double the price, I reckon, considerin’ the amoun’ of readin’ in it.’
‘Ain’t no deliv’rin’ numbers, or signin’ ’greements, or any o’ that game?’ asked one suspiciously. ‘’Cause if there is, we’re full.’