Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/295

 stranger foraged about among the books and newspapers, and with the aid of tobacco, managed to spend the evening, retiring to rest in the apartment indicated, with perfect cheerfulness and self-possession.

If, as chiefly happened, the hard-worked colonist returned from the quest of lost sheep or strayed cattle before bed-time, he usually expressed himself much gratified by the unexpected companionship, and after a cheery confab about the latest news, politics, prospects (pastoral), and a parting smoke, both retired to the couches where unbroken slumbers were the rule. It was a mutual benefit. The monotonous life of the squatter was cheered by the advent of a fresh face, fresh news and ideas. The weary traveller found frank entertainment for man and beast, company and a guide, possibly, for the morrow's journey.

In these strictly equestrian days (for gentlefolk) no man could carry more than a limited change of apparel in the leather valise strapped to the fore-part of the saddle. Saddle-bags were occasionally used, but they were held to be cumbrous. The journeys were rough and protracted. Clean linen has ever been unwillingly dispensed with by the Briton. In that barbaric epoch, Crimean shirts could not be, the quarrel with the Sultan about the mythical keys not having arisen. Paper collars, much more celluloids, were in the future. The only recognised departure from the full-dress white raiment, the 'biled shirt' of the American humorist to come, was the check or 'regatta' shirt.

Now this was a garment of compromise, not disreputably soiled after a couple of days' use. Still its existence as a respectable article of apparel had a limit. When that was reached, the stranger was permitted to levy on the host's wardrobe, if a bachelor, to the extent of one coloured shirt, leaving his own in lieu. This was held to be fair exchange—the alien vestment, when washed, being, if of ordinary texture and age, of equal average value to the one taken; the host doing likewise when on his travels. The chief and perhaps only undesirable result was, that every proprietor on a frequented line of road had a collection of the most varied and cosmopolitan autographs in marking ink, on his shirts, probably ever noticed in one gentleman's wardrobe.

Now this was all very well in the days when Mr. Jones and Mr. Smith were in the free and independent condition of