The day had been a long one, and, supper ended, the boys were quite resigned to go to bed, or at least to the bedroom. The noises therefrom, after their retirement, were very suggestive of prime larks, and continued long after lights were out. The pals were domiciled, to their great delight, in a big spare room, which contained a double bed and a single one. Joe and Tom shared the former, while Sandy camped on the latter, which was, indeed, his stretcher brought in for the occasion.
Silence reigned supreme at length within, and without was broken only by the hoarse croaking of the frogs, an occasional call from a night owl, and the weird wail of the curlew.
CHAPTER XIV
CHRISTMAS FUN AND FROLIC
"It was the time when geese despond
And turkeys make their wills;
The time when Christians to a man
Forgive each other's bills.
It was the time when Christmas glee
The heart of childhood fills."
BRUNTON STEPHENS.
Daylight had barely broken. The only stir in the household is that produced by Joe, whose slumber had been disturbed by the persistent crawling of flies across his face.
There are three things in animated nature which run each other very closely for the supremacy in downright tenacity to purposeful cussedness. Pig, Hen, Fly—these three! And of the three, the cussedest and most exasperatingly tenacious to its rooted purpose of squeezing in between one's eyelids, sinking a well in the corner of one's eye, or climbing the inside walls of one's nose, is the Australian species of the common house-fly.
It is possible at times to circumvent the "gintilman wot pays the rint," and persuade him to return through the same hole in the fence which gave him escape, by appearing to be anxious to drive him out on to the plain. That is pig strategy; or rather, strategy with a pig. He is beaten, so to speak, by the law of contrairy. When all resources fail in persuading the hen that the flour-bin, or the linen basket, is not specially constructed to suit her convenience in the daily duty of egg producing, one can at the last resort requisition the services of Madame la Guillotine.
But neither strategy nor tactics, neither force nor fraud, avail anything when the early fly, with recruited energies and fiendish intent, starts on her mission of seeking whom and what she may annoy. She—it is quite safe to put the insect in the feminine gender—can be neither coaxed, persuaded, shoo'd, deceived, frightened, nor driven from her prey. The fly always wins—in the end.
Driven from Blanket Bay on this eventful Christinas morning by the incorrigible fly, Joe proceeded at once to reverse the Golden Rule, and promptly made war upon his mates on that morning which, of all the days in the year, makes for peace and goodwill among men.