A constrained silence fell on the grown-up children, till Willoughby politely sought to restore ease by contributing his quota to the evening’s feast of reason
“There occurs to my mind a capital thing,” he said; “a capital thing, indeed, though apropos of nothing in particular. A student, returning from a stroll, encountered a countryman, carrying a hare in his hand. ‘Friend,’ said the student quietly, ‘is that thine own hare or a wig?’ The joke, of course, lies in the play on the word ‘hare’.”
Willoughby’s courteous effort was worse than wasted, for the general depression deepened.
“You’re right, Thompson,” said Cooper, at length. “Mostly everybody’s got a curse on them. I got a curse on me. I got it through swearin’ and Sabbath-breakin’. I’ve tried to knock off swearin’ fifty dozen times, but I might as well try to fly. Last time I tried to knock it off was when I left Nyngan for Kenilworth, four months ago; but there happened to be a two-hundredweight bag o’ rice in the bottom o’ the load; an’ something tore her, an’ she started leakin’ through the cracks in the floor o’ the wagon; an’ I couldn’t git at her no road, for there was seven ton on top of her; an’ the blasted stuff it kep’ dribble-dribble till you could ’a’ tracked me at a gallop for over a hundred mile; an’ me swearin’ at it till I was black in the face; an’ it always stopped dribblin’ at night, like as if it was to aggravate a man. If it hadn’t been for that rice, I’d ’a’ kep’ from swearin’ that trip; an’ then, comin’ down from Kenilworth with Thompson, I’d ’a’ kep’ from it easy; for Thompson he never swears. I give him credit for that much.”
“I don’t claim any credit,” remarked Thompson, with the unconscious spiritual swagger which so often antecedes, and possibly generates, lapse. “I never could see that swearing did any good; so I just say to myself, ‘You’d like to come out, would you?—well, then, once for all, you won’t.’”
“You’re a happy man, curse and all,” replied the giant gloomily. “For my own part, I was brought up careful, but I’ve turned out a (adj.) failure. Nobody would think, seeing me so brisk an’ cheerful, that I got more worry nor anybody on’y myself could stand. I got more trouble nor all you fellers put together.” He paused, evidently battling feebly with that impulse which bids us ease the loaded breast, even when discovery’s pain. His voice was even lower and sadder as he resumed:
“My father he was well off, with a comfortable place of his own on the Hawkesbury; an’ there was on’y me an’ my sister Molly; for my mother died of a cold she caught when I was about twelve or fourteen, and Molly she was hardly so old. If you was to travel the country, you wouldn’t meet another man like my ole dad. He was what you might call”
“My farther he was a sojer,” interposed Dixon. “He could whack any man of his weight in the 40th. Las’ word he says to me: ‘Bob,’ says he; ‘be a man—an’ keep Injun ink off o’ yer arms, for you never know,’ says he, ‘what you might do.’”
“Not many men like my ole dad,” pursued Cooper. “Fetch up your youngsters in the natur’ an’ admiration o’ the Lord, an’ don’t be
