Heart of Coal Read Online Free PDF Page B

What point is that?
    Enough of resolutions. Four is plenty.
     
    My views on the Boer War (That is more interesting than scone dough.)
    The Bulletin is full of how brave the poor besieged English are and how brutish the Boers, but Mr Stringer says there is another side to it and the Boers were there first. I say surely the natives were there first, what about them, but Mr Stringer says this is not about natives but about who will rule them. He says imagine if the French sent boatloads to the North Island and then claimed it for France! I say well, that would be interesting for we would have a foreigncountry on our doorstep — very convenient for visiting and learning the language. Mr Stringer frowns and puffs his pipe and says I am thinking only of myself and not the issues involved.
    Oh dear, writing about arguments that are already over is no fun. There is no one to argue with. I love to wind Mr Stringer up into a rage. He is so serious about his views: so against the war in principle and against our colony sending troops, so rampantly in favour of the Arbitration Act, that I just have to take the opposite view. That is great fun. I tell him he is no better than the Conservatives because his Liberal views are just as set in concrete as the landowners’ and the employers’, which makes him sputter and tear his hair until I burst out laughing and tell him I am only teasing. Mr Stringer may glower and rant, but it is perfectly clear he is enjoying himself as much as I.
    But with no adversary my interest melts away like snow in a kettle. Does that make me a shallow person? I would not like to be thought of as silly and light-headed, like Liza Hanratty or Kitty Stokes. They see the Boer War as a fine heroic enterprise, and talk in awed whispers about Manny Donaldson and Barry Forbes, who joined up to fight in it.
    Enough of the Boer War!
     
    New Topic: Life as a Draper’s Assistant
     
    The question, as Mr Stringer would say, is Why??? Why, oh why, am I a draper’s assistant, and why in the name of heaven choose Inch Donaldson to assist? (This is more interesting.)
    Positions I have been offered: Teacher’s Assistant (three times)
    Visiting Doctor’s Assistant (part-time)
    Pay Clerk’s Assistant (part-time). To check on Jackie O’Shea’s figures because there are so many disputes from the miners who sayJackie got their tallies wrong. Now why did I turn that one down? I love to run figures through my head. They pour like water this way and that, pooling in interesting combinations and divisions. I would have loved that position, but I laughed and walked away. Sometimes I think I am just plain mad. Here is an interesting thought: am I trying to punish myself? The thieving, for example? And working for Inch Donaldson? That man would drive a saint to drink with his sighs and sad drooping moustaches, and his ridiculous fussy fear of anything remotely unclean. And here I am working hour after hour in his gloomy little shop, his sad eyes following me every inch of every day. Yesterday my only sin was to stand in the doorway to catch a glimpse or two of the sun. Not one soul in the shop; all the bolts and swatches neatly stacked in their shelves like churchgoers in their pews; the ribbons and buttons regimented on the counter; fresh orders neatly copied. He could think of no fresh task, but still … ‘Come inside, come inside, Miss!’ calls Mr Donaldson. ‘You will give the shop a bad name, displaying yourself like that.’
    Displaying myself! That is what he said. I was standing with my two feet together, smiling at the sun. And if Michael came past at that very moment with a shout and a wave and a skerrick of gossip, what harm was in that? But no, Inch Donaldson’s arm was tugging me inside before I heard the end of the story. And outside, Michael and his friends prancing in the road, laughing at me, making prison bars with their fingers to show how I was trapped. Oh, I could have slapped the lot of them!
    If Bella