Page:Over the Sliprails - 1900.djvu/156

 keep steady, and by-and-bye we’ll go away to Sydney or Queensland. Give us a smile, mother.”

He got some “grubbing” to do, and for six months kept the family in provisions. Then a change came over him. He became moody and sullen—even brutal. He would sit for hours and grin to himself without any apparent cause; then he would stay away from home for days together.

“Tom’s going wrong again,” wailed Mrs. Wylie. “He’ll get into trouble again, I know he will. We are disgraced enough already, God knows.”

“You’ve done your best, mother,” said Mary, “and can do no more. People will pity us; after all, the thing itself is not so bad as the everlasting dread of it. This will be a lesson for father—he wanted one—and maybe he’ll be a better man.” (She knew better than that.) “You did your best, mother.”

“Ah, Mary! you don’t know what I’ve gone through these thirty years in the bush with your father. I’ve had to go down on my knees and beg people not to prosecute him—and the same with your brother Tom; and this is the end of it.”

“Better to have let them go, mother; you should have left father when you found out what sort of a man he was; it would have been better for all.”

“It was my duty to stick by him, child; he was my husband. Your father was always a bad man, Mary—a bad man; I found it out too late. I could not tell you a quarter of what I have suffered with him. … I was proud, Mary; I wanted my children to be better than others. … It’s my fault; it’s a judgment. … I wanted to make my children