Bowles, who applies himself to his meerschaum, amid the ironical comments of the shearers. However, not easily daunted, or 'shut up,' according to the more familiar station phrase, he rejoins, after a brief interval of contemplation, that 'accidents will happen, you know, De Vere, my boy—apropos of which moral sentiment, I'll come and help you in your dry-goods business; and then, look here, if you get ill or run away, I'll have a profession to fall back upon.' This is held to be a Roland of sufficient pungency for De Vere's Oliver. Every one laughed. And the two youngsters betook themselves to a humorous puffing of the miscellaneous contents of the store: tulip beds of gorgeous Crimean shirts, boots, books, tobacco, canvas slippers, pocket-knives, Epsom salts, pipes, pickles, pain-killer, pocket-handkerchiefs, and pills, sardines, saddles, shears, and sauces; in fact, everything which every kind of man might want, and which apparently every man did want, for large and various were the purchases, and great the flow of conversation. Finally, after everything had been severely and accurately debited to the purchasers, the store was cleared and locked up. A store is a necessity of a large station; not by any means because of the profit upon goods sold, but it obviously would be bad economy for old Bill the shepherd, or Barney the bullock-driver, to visit the next township, from ten to twenty miles distant, as the case may be, every time the former wanted a pound of tobacco, or the latter a pair of boots. They might possibly obtain these necessary articles as good in quality, as cheap in price. But there are wolves in that wood, oh, my weak brothers! In every town dwells one of the 'sons of the giant'—the Giant Grog—red-eyed, with steel muscles and iron claws; once in these, which have held many and better men to the death, Barney nor Bill emerges not, save pale, fevered, nerveless, and impecunious. So arose the station store. Barney befits himself with boots without losing his feet; Bill fills his pockets with match-boxes and smokes the pipe of sobriety, virtuous perforce till his carnival, after shearing.
The next day was wet, and threatened broken weather. Matters were not too placid with the shearers. A day or two for rest is all very well, but continuous wet weather means compulsory idleness, and gloom succeeds repose; for not only are all hands losing time and earning no money, but
