Pelican Pool: A Novel

by Sydney Loch

"I wish he wouldn't make me laugh. I am so sorry for him," said Maud.

King made answer. "It's not the best of lives this, packing up for somewhere at the end of every week, knowing the sun will be at the back of your neck all day, and a dozen wild children wait at the journey-end for the ABC to be knocked into their heads. I am content to stay plain John King."

"A man can say he has put a good day's work behind him," Power said, "and that's as well. It helps to pull his thoughts straight at night."

"Jim, you are taking life so heavily to-day. I had to cheer up Mr. King this morning because he looked too long at the pretty girl. Now you have caught the blues somewhere."

The butcher's shop stands on this side of the hotel, and on Tuesday and Saturday the butcher stands behind his block, and chops your fate up with the meat. Mrs. Niven, Mrs. Boulder and Mrs. Bullock grow very humble when they go a-shopping. It is "Mr. Simpson, and how's the heat been using yer, and is there any chance of a bit o' the silverside this time?" And "Mr. Simpson, and I suppose the flies is worrying yer a treat, and I take it it's my turn for the undercut." And Simpson, with a to-do of knife and steel makes answer. "Now, I'm givin' wot there is, and I'm not givin' nothing else, and if yer aren't satisfied, yer can go elsewhere. I reckon the next butcher isn't farther than Mount Milton, and I reckon Mount Milton isn't more than seventy mile."

"Aw, you are gettin' at us, Mr. Simpson," comes the timid chorus.

The bakery stands between the butcher's and the hotel, presenting itself to the world as a building of wood and bagging of a very cutthroat appearance. Mr. Regan, baker, being a man of parts, turns a pleasant sovereign or two in the little "Crown and Anchor" saloon at the back. A couple of nights a week the policeman looks in to run the bank for an hour or so. It's "Now don't stand feeling yer corns there as though yer ole woman was watching. Choose yer crown, and pick yer anchor. The dice aren't loaded more than my old grandad's gun was, and I never see him try to blow to bits anything stronger than his nose. Come on, gents, every throw a crown, and every chuck an anchor. An' don't forget time's flying, as the monkey said when he 'eaved the clock through the winder."

They took their stand under the hotel verandah. In twos and threes Surprise strolled to the meeting ground. Neville waved his stick a dozen times and grunted a how-de-do and shouted. Mr. Horrington appeared presently, and later disappeared; and others of note swelled the congregation. In a doorway loitered Barcoo Bill, as graceful a hand at duffing a horse as you might find this side of the border. Into stout argument had fallen one-eyed Sal, who, armed with a crowbar, and fortified with a bottle of Dewar's best, had once upon a time defeated the only policeman in a single round go-as-you-please affair. In a patch of shade kicked his heels Iron-jawed Dick, who, for the price of a drink, had lifted in his teeth a table laid for dinner. Other people—tall and short, lean and stout—took their stand up and down the way, and kept ever the tail of an eye on the horizon. Dusty curs mooched about, and sat down suddenly to beat their stomachs with a back leg. At half the posts were hitched high-rumped horses with rusty saddles a-top of them.

The walk in the sun had left King a good deal the worse for wear. He pulled forth a handkerchief and pushed it about his face. "If," said he, making an end, "things are ordered properly in the world to come, we shall have a special heaven to ourselves. There the sun will totter through the sky in a mild old age, the rivers will run water, the goats will come home to be milked, and the woodbox will never empty. And an angel will wait at the gates holding out a flypaper in place of a flaming sword."