"That's all right," said Ned, suddenly feeling a respect for this grizzled drunkard. "We must all help one another. How was it?"
"Well," said the lad. "I met a friend of mine and he gave me sixpence and this box of cigarettes. It was all he had. I've often slept here and so I came and asked the old man to trust me the other half. He wouldn't listen to it. I was going away when this gentleman came along. He only had threepence more than his own bed-money but he persuaded the old man to knock off threepence and he'd pay threepence. I thought I'd have had to go to the Domain."
"But that's nothing," said Ned. "I'd just as soon sleep out as sleep in."
"I've never come down to sleeping out yet," returned the lad, simply. "Perhaps your being a native makes a difference." Ned was confronted again with the fact that the bushman and the townsman view the same thing from opposite sides. To this lad, struggling to keep his head up, to lie down nightly in the Domain meant the surrender of all self-respecting decency.
"I shouldn't have brought up the subject. You understand me?" said the drunkard. "But now it's mentioned I'll ask if you noticed how I talked over that old scoundrel downstairs. You understand me? Where's that flask? My God! I am feeling bad," he continued, sitting up on the bed.
"You're drinking too much," remarked Ned.
The man did not reply, but, with a groan, pushed the lad aside, sprang from the bed, and began to retch prodigiously into the wash basin, after which he announced himself better, lay down and took another drink. Meanwhile the man in the far corner tossed and groaned as if he were dying.
"You're friend's still worse," said the lad.
"He's just out of the hospital. I told him he shouldn't mix his drinks so soon but he would have his own way. He'll be all right when he's slept it off. A man's a fool who gets drunk. You understand me?"
"I understand you," said the lad. "I never want to get drunk. All I want is work."