Page:Kangaroo, 1923.pdf/389

 "Yes, all right," said Jack, rising from bending over the sick man. Somers had already gone to the door. The nurse entered, and the two men found themselves in the dark passage.

"I shall have to be coming along, Mr Somers, if you'll wait a minute," said Jack.

"I'll wait outside," said Somers. And he went out and down to the street, into the sun, where people were moving about. They were like pasteboard figures shifting on a flat light.

After a few minutes Jack joined him.

"Poor 'Roo, it's a question of days now," said Jack.

"Yes."

"Hard lines, you know, when a man's in his prime and just ready to enter into his own. Bitter hard lines."

"Yes."

"That's why I think you were a bit hard on him. I do love him myself, so I can say so without exaggerating the fact. But if I hated the poor man like hell, and saw him lying there in that state—why, I'd swear on red-hot iron I loved him, I would. A man like that—a big, grand man, as great a hero as ever lived. If a man can't speak two words out of pity for a man in his state, why, I think there's something wrong with that man. Sorry to have say it. But if Old Harry himself had lain there like that and asked me to say I loved him I'd have done it. Heart-breaking, it was. But I suppose some folks is stingy about sixpence, and others is stingy about saying two words that would give another poor devil his peace of mind."

Richard walked on in angry silence. He hated being condemned in this free-and-easy, rough-and-ready fashion.

"But I suppose chaps from the old country are more careful of what they say—might give themselves away or something of that. We're different over here. Kick yourself over the cliff like an old can if a mate's in trouble and needs a helping hand, or a bit of sympathy. That's us. But I suppose being brought up in the old country, where everybody's frightened that somebody else is going to take advantage of him, makes you more careful. So you're leaving Australia, are you? Mrs Somers want to go?"

"I think so. Not very emphatically, perhaps."