“To you? For what?”
“Legal advice,” answered Mr. Bradshaw, placing his thumbs in the upper pockets of his vest with an air of great complacency. “Haven’t I just told you you’d have to pay it?”
Riles was so dumbfounded that he pulled out ten dollars, threw it at the smiling lawyer, and proceeded down street without a word.
But having paid fifteen dollars for legal advice Riles was too shrewd a business man not to profit by it. That night he engaged another “barnyard savage,” being careful to hire him for a month. The man worked for four days and quit. Riles refused to pay him any wages, and hired another stranger on the same terms. In this way he was able to get through the fall without any direct outlay for help.
But the system was not very satisfactory. Too much time was lost hunting for new men, and the labourers always quit before they got into Riles’ way of managing the farm. The suggestion of the man who knocked him into the wheel of the buckboard stayed with him almost as tenaciously as the scar he then received. “Hire a green Englishman—some poor fool that doesn’t know any more than be a victim of a blood-sucker of your class.” Of course the words were rather strong—even Riles objected to them—but the sentiment was all right. Besides, it was doing the Englishman a good turn. It brought him away from a congested country and gave him an insight into life in a new land. With industry and application even an Englishman might become—might become—as prosperous and successful a farmer as he himself! There was something for a young man to look forward to!
A good scheme had been worked by one or two of Riles’s neighbours. These men—transplanted Englishmen themselves—who, to tell the truth, had made a very indifferent success of agriculture, had hit upon the idea of giving instruction to young Englishmen of good family in the art of farming as it is practised in the Canadian West. They had no difficulty in finding fond fathers who, for reasons that need not be entered into here, were anxious that their sons should have a “colonial” experience, and were willing to pay from fifty to two hundred pounds a head per year (according to the state of the paternal exchequer and the desirability of the exodus) for the board, lodging and instruction of their sons in the “colony.” Of course it never occurred to these worthy parents that there are state-controlled institutions for giving just the instruction needed, where their sons would be brought in contact with the best influences in the land. Even had they known of these institutions they would probably have preferred to place their young hopefuls with some old acquaintance whose Munchausian reports of his success in Canada were accepted as gospel, but whose real accomplishments consisted mainly in supporting the brewery and dodging the bailiff—two occupations which usually go hand in hand.
But Riles was not of the blood. He knew no one in England, and one or two advances which he made to the English neighbours mentioned with a view to “getting in on a good thing” were met with a coldness which amounted to a rebuff. There remained only one thing to be done—adopt a Barnardo boy. Riles would have much preferred a grown-up man, but on consultation with some of the neighbours who had adopted these boys he was assured that they could be depended upon to do as much work as a man, and were more easily controlled. Twenty years ago the latter consideration would not have appealed to Riles, but he recalled the incident where he received his scar, and he knew enough about Englishmen to know that if they excelled in anything it was in their ability to protect themselves from physical damage, and incidentally to administer a thrashing to their assailants. On the whole, perhaps a boy would suit his purpose better.
Before being entrusted with the foster-parentage of an English orphan, Riles found that he must have his application supported by the recommendation of two reputable citizens and a resident clergyman. He at once appealed to his neighbour, David Grant, than whom there was no more respected farmer in the community. He hardly was prepared for Mr. Grant’s frankness.
“No, Hiram, I can’t sign that paper. If one of my boys, ten or twelve years old, were to be left an orphan, I wouldn’t want him to come under your influence for the next five years of his life. You’re a good farmer, Riles, but being a good farmer is one thing, and being a good father’s another. A great many people in this country seem to think it more important that a man should be able to break in a colt than bring up a boy.”
“Oh, well,” Riles answered, good naturedly enough, “if it was yer son of course it ’ud be different. They’ve always had a good home, better’n most boys, I’m thinkin’. But these English brats, herded out of the streets an’ turned loose in this country to live or die—it’s a charity for anyone to take them in. They don’t know nothin’, an’ never will, but eat an’ sleep an’ lie an’ steal when they get a chance. They’ve got to be broke in severe, an’ I reckon Hiram Riles can do it ’s well as the next one. ’Course, if yuh’ve got conscientious objections,” continued Riles, the habitual sneer creeping back into his disfigured face, “I won’t press you to sign the paper.”