Page:On Our Selection.djvu/161

Rh Casey left the fence again and drove the cows away, and mended the wire on his way back.

At sundown Casey was cutting more wood, and when we were at supper he brought it in and put some on the fire, and went out again slowly.

Mother and Sal talked about him.

"Better give him his supper," Sal said, and Mother sent Joe to invite him in. He did n't come in at once. Casey was n't a forward man. He stayed to throw some pumpkin to the pigs.

Casey slept in the barn that night. He slept in it the next night, too. He did n't believe in shifting from place to place, so he stayed with us altogether. He took a lively interest in the selection. The house, he said, was in the wrong place, and he showed Mother where it ought to have been built. He suggested shifting it, and setting a hedge and ornamental trees in front and fruit trees at the back, and making a nice place of it. Little things like that pleased Mother. "Anyway," she would sometimes say to Sal, "he 's a useful old man, and knows how to look after things about the place." Casey did. Whenever any watermelons were ripe, he looked after them and hid the skins in the ground. And if a goanna or a crow came and frightened a hen from her nest Casey always got the egg, and when he had gobbled