Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/18

 the morning, when they could travel together. Stoate cheerfully assented, and on the morrow they took the road after breakfast, much to Mrs. Hardwick's annoyance, who did not care for the arrangement. For, with feminine intuition, she distrusted Janus Stoate, about whom she and her husband had had arguments.

He was a Londoner—an 'assisted' emigrant, a radical socialist, brought out at the expense of the colony. For which service he was so little grateful that he spoke disrespectfully of all the authorities, from the Governor downward, and indeed, as it seemed to her, of respectable people of every rank and condition. Now Jenny, besides being naturally an intelligent young woman, utilised her leisure hours during her husband's absence, for reading the newspapers, as well as any books she could get at. She had indeed more brains than he had, which gift she owed to an Irish grandmother. And though she did by no means attempt to rule him, her advice was always listened to and considered.

'I wish you were going with some one else,' she said with an air of vexation. 'It's strange that that Stoate should come, just on your last evening at home. I don't like him a little bit. He's just artful enough to persuade you men that he's going to do something great with this "Australian Shearers' Union" that I see so much about in the newspapers. I don't believe in him, and so I tell you, Bill!'

'I know you don't like Unions,' he answered, 'but see what they've done for the working classes! What could we shearers have done without ours?'

'Just what you did before you had anything to do with him and his Union. Do your work and get paid for it. You got your shearing money all right, didn't you? Mr. Templemore's cheques, and Mr. Dickson's and Mr. Shand's, were always paid, weren't they? How should we have got the land and this home, but for them?'

'Well, but, Jenny, we ought to think about the other workers as well as ourselves—"Every man should stand by his order," as Stoate says.'

'I don't see that at all. Charity's all very well, but we have our own business to look after and let other people mind theirs. Order, indeed! I call it disorder,—and them that work it up will have to pay for it, mark my words. You