The Sergeant accepted with pleasure; the host was afraid he would be too busy about the bar at the dinner hour, but would look in afterwards, before the evening was spent. So it was settled, and the recent acquaintances rode away.
“What a fine old fellow the Sergeant is!” said Blount; “how wonderfully neat and trim everything inside the house and out is kept.”
“You’ll generally notice that about a place when the owner has been in the police; the inspector blows up the troopers if there is a button off, or a boot not cleaned. You’d think they’d let a prisoner go, to hear him talk. Barracks—stable—carbine—horse—all have to be neat and clean, polished up to the nines. Once they get the habit of that they never leave it off, and after they settle down in a country place, as it might be here, they set a good example to the farmers and bush people.”
“So the police force promotes order in more ways than one—they root out dishonesty and crime as well—they’re a grand institution of the country.”
“Well, yes, they are,” assented the landlord without enthusiasm, “though they’re not all built the way the Sergeant is. I don’t say but what they’re a trifle hard on publicans now and again for selling a drink to a traveller on a Sunday. But if it’s the law, they’re bound to uphold it. We’d be a deal worse off without them, and that’s the truth.”
Blount and the landlord rode down the course of the stream with much interest, as far as the Englishman was concerned. For the other, the landscape was a thing of course. The rich meadow land which bordered the stream—the far blue mountains—the fat bullocks and sleek horses feeding in the fields—the sheep on their way to market, were to him an ancient and settled order of things, as little provocative of curiosity as if they had existed from the foundation of the world. He had been familiar from childhood with them, or with similar stock and scenery.
But the stranger’s interest and constant inquiry were unceasing. Everything was new to him. The fences, the crops, the maize, of which the tall stems were still standing in their rows, though occasionally stripped and thrown down by the pigs which were rooting among them and gleaning the smaller cobs left behind in the harvest plucking. A certain carelessness of husbandry was noticed by the critic from over sea. The hedges were mostly untrimmed, the plough too often left in the furrow; the weeds, “thick-coming carpet after rain,” untouched by the scarifier; the fences broken, hedges indifferently trimmed.
“This sort of farming wouldn’t go down in England.”
“Perhaps not. Never was there,” replied the Australian Boniface; “but these chaps are mostly so well off, that they don’t mind losing a trifle this way, rather than have too many men to pay and feed. Labour’s cheap in England, I’m told; here it’s dear. So the farmer crowds on all he can get till harvest and shearin’s past, then he pays off all hands, except an old crawler or two, to milk cows and draw wood and water. Afterwards he hires no more till ploughing begins again.”
“There does seem to be a reason for that, and other things I have observed,” assented Mr. Blount. “I suppose in time everything will be nearer English, or perhaps American ideas. More likely the last. Machinery for everything, and no time for decent leisurely country work.”