Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/43

 opinion so often, for the benefit of all whom it might concern, that he began to know it by heart, and half thought of standing for the district, when the next election came round. However, the men liked him, and didn't mind his hard words, knowing that they held the key of the position, and that he was powerless if he wanted his sheep shorn. He couldn't afford to kick them out, however much he might wish so to do. All the sheds in the district were short of men, and if the shearers left in a body, the year's clip would suffer ruinous loss and injury. So they turned up their noses at the beautiful, fat, well-cooked mutton,—said 'they wanted more chops.' To which Macdonald sarcastically replied 'that he supposed they must grow a new breed of sheep, all chops' In spite of their five meals a day, early breakfast, tea and 'brownie' at eleven o'clock, dinner at one, afternoon tea at four o'clock, and supper at half-past six, they were not satisfied, and, indeed, would not have gone without a second supper at 9 if the cook had not refused point-blank, and being a fighting man of some eminence, invited the deputation to 'step outside and put up their hands,' one after the other.

However, as before mentioned, a start was made, and though the quality of shearing was no great things, and Mr. Stoate, duly elected Shearers' Delegate, produced his appointment and walked up and down the shed, with great dignity, carefully ignoring Macdonald, and ostentatiously writing or telegraphing to W. Stead, Esq., President of the A.S.U., Wagga Wagga, N.S. Wales, some kind of progress was made, and the super's face began to lose its saturnine expression. The weather, which in the early days of spring had been showery and unfavourable, changed for the better, and the heaviest of the flocks having been shorn, 'big tallies'—a hundred and thirty, and even one hundred and fifty or sixty—began to be made.

The discontented shearers even, whose minds had been unsettled by specious, communistic talk, prophesying a general distribution of property among the wage-earners, according to the gospel of Bellamy, commenced to be more or less satisfied. Visions of the big cheque, to which each man was adding now (prospectively) at the rate of from a pound to thirty-five shillings a day, commenced to float in the air.