Page:Triangles of life, and other stories.djvu/26

 many paragraphs, some verse, and other matter with the stump of a blue pencil. Then he cut out all the marked pieces carefully with his penknife, and pasted them on strips of brown paper; then he borrowed a carpenter's rule, measured the strips carefully, and entered the result in a pocket-book!

The girl noticed first, of course. Then she whispered to the landlady, who went and had an indifferent look, as also had Poisonous Jimmy. They'd seen too many drink and drought "looneys" to take much notice. Then One-Eyed Bogan went to see for himself, and glared in quite awhile with his one eye.

"——! Blowed if he ain't took it from Billy!" he said. "I told yer yer couldn't be too careful in them cases! Lunatic-doctors an' lunatic-nurses all get it more or less themselves if they stick to the game long enough. Who the blazes next, I wonder?"

Then the new lunatic wanted a piece of white paper, and the landlady humoured him—as she had done the others—to "save trouble and for the sake of peace and quietness." She found it at the bottom of a "band-box" (where did that term come from to Australia?). Then he wrapped the brown paper with the slips pasted on, folded it, tied it neatly with twine, addressed, stamped—and posted it to a newspaper!

"And I'll have to send it, because it's stamped," said Poisonous Jimmy. "Couldn't keep it back without a doctor's certificate. You chaps had better give the policeman a hint—what goes in the coach with your mate. T'other looney's goin' too."

But just a little rite had to be performed that