“I never remember such a season since the year I bought the run,” he remarked to his son. “You were quite a little fellow then, and Laura hardly able to walk. It puts me quite in mind of old times—of the happy days which I thought had fled for ever.”
“Well, please goodness, governor, we’ll knock something out of the old place this year that will make up for past losses. Sheep are rising fast, and, as we can’t help having a fine lambing and a good clip, you’ll see what we’ll rake in. We must put up a new washpen, though, and enlarge the shed a bit. It won’t cost much, as I’ve put a first-rate man on. He’s a Swede, been a ship’s carpenter, and the quickest worker, when he understands what you want done, that I ever saw. Not one of your cabinet-making humbugs who are all day morticing a gate-head. I’ll draw in all the round stuff, and you’ll see how soon we’ll knock it up.”
“All right, my boy; any improvements in reason, only we mustn’t spend all our money before we make it.”
“Trust me for that, dad; you won’t find me spending a penny that can be saved. We shall want no extra hands till shearing time. All the paddocks are right and tight, so the sheep will shepherd themselves, and do all the better, too. How jolly it is to have no bother about water, isn’t it? And what a bit of luck we had that dam in the hill paddock finished just before the rain came.”
“Nothing like doing things at the right time, Hubert,” replied Mr. Stamford, with an air of oracular wisdom. “You had half a mind to leave that same dam till next year.”
“Well, I must confess I hadn’t much heart to go shovelling and picking that gravelly clay—hard as iron—with the weather so hot too, and looking as if rain was never coming again. But you were right to have it done, and now we have the benefit of it. Got a pretty fair paddock of oats in too. It’s coming up splendidly.”
“How did you manage that without a team?”
“Hired a carrier’s for a week or two. He was short of cash, and wanted to spell his bullocks; besides we ripped over the ploughing in no time. Then I made a brush harrow and finished it with the station horses. The main thing was to get in the seed the first break of dry weather, and now we shall have a stack that will last us two years at least.”
“Well done, my boy; dry seasons will come again some day; we must prepare for them, though everything looks so bright, or rather so delightfully cloudy, just now. We shall have to invent a fresh set of proverbs to suit Australia, shall we not, instead of using our old-fashioned English ones?”
“Yes, indeed. Can anything be more ludicrous than ‘Save up for a rainy day?’ ‘Look ahead in case of a dry season,’ should be our motto. This carrier was rather a smart chap, and understood similes. ‘Will that bullock go steady on the near side?’ I asked him the other day. ‘Oh! he’s right,’ he said; ‘right as rain!’ That was something like, wasn’t it? By the bye, dad, you didn’t forget those books of mine, did you?”