The Far Country Read Online Free PDF Page B

homestead and parked in the grassy yard. Ann Pearson came out to meet them; she was Australian born and spoke with a marked Australian accent, in contrast to her husband, who had come out as a farmer’s son in 1930 and still retained a trace of Somerset in his speech. “Didn’t you see George?” she asked afterthe first greetings. “He went down to the dam, with the children.”
    “We didn’t stop,” said Jane. “He’s probably down there.”
    “Just dropped in to see if George had got his wool cheque,” Jack Dorman said, grinning.
    Ann said, “Oh, my word.” There seemed no need for any further comment.
    Jack turned to Jane and said, “It’s all right. They’ve got enough money to give us tea.”
    “Give tea to everybody in the shire,” said Ann. “How long’s it going on for, Jack? I tell you, we get sort of frightened sometimes. It can’t go on like this, can it?”
    “It’ll be down next year,” Jack Dorman said, “Not real low, but down to something reasonable, I’d say. It can blow a blizzard after that, for all I care.”
    They got out of the car and went with her to the wide veranda, and sat down in deck-chairs. “That’s what George thinks, too. I’d be quite glad if it went down a bit. It doesn’t seem right, somehow. It’s not good for the children, either, to see money come so easy.”
    She told them that they were sailing for England in April on the P. and O.
Strathmore;
the children were going to stay with their grandmother at Nagambie. “George booked the cabin six months ago,” she said, “but I never really thought it’ld come off. Still, now we’re going, definitely. His dad and mum, they’re still alive at this place Shepton Mallet where he was brought up. I never thought I’d meet them, but now it looks as if I shall.”
    She turned to Jane with a question that had been worrying her a good deal. “When you go on those P. and O. boats travelling first-class,” she said, “what do you wear at night? Is it a low evening dress every night, or is that just for dances?”
    George Pearson came back presently with six hungry children, and they all sat down to tea at the long table in the kitchen, eleven of them, counting the hired man, a Pole from Slonim, who spoke little English. They ate the best part of two joints of cold roast mutton with a great dish of potatoes and thought nothing of it, topping up with bread and jam and two plum cakes, and many cups of tea. Then the men went out into the yard and put the three visiting children on their ponies and saw them off so that they would be home by nightfall, which comes early in Australia.
    The two graziers talked quietly for a time on the veranda while their wives washed up indoors. “Going home in April, so Ann told us,” Dorman said.
    “Aye.” George smoked for a few minutes in silence. “See the old folks once more, anyway. I don’t know what it’s going to be like there, now.”
    “I asked Jane if she’d like to go back home, but she didn’t want to. She said it’ld all be different.”
    “Aye. I want to see my brother, see if he won’t come out. There’s still land going if you look around a bit.”
    “Ninety pounds an acre.” They both smiled. “Forty-five or fifty, if you look around,” said George. “He’d get that for the land he’s got at home.”
    “All right while the wool keeps up.”
    “I want to see what things are like at home,” George Pearson said. “They may not be so bad as what you read.”
    “They don’t have to be,” said Dorman. “I see where it says in the paper that you can’t have a new car if you’ve had one since the war, and now they’re selling squirrels in the butchers’ shops. What’s a squirrel like to look at? Is it like a possum?”
    “Smaller than that,” said George. “More the size of a rat. It’s a clean feeder, though; I suppose you could eat squirrel. Gypsies used to eat them, where I come from.”
    There was a slow, bewildered silence. “I’d