Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/211

 worse; don't talk. You might, at the very least, have a little consideration for my feelings―even if you haven't for your own interests.' He paused and regarded Smith sadly. 'Well, I'll give you another show. I'll stage the business for you.'

He made Smith doff his coat and get into his worst pair of trousers―and they were bad enough; they were hopelessly 'gone,' beyond the extreme limit of bush decency. He made Smith put on a rag of a felt hat and a pair of ''lastic sides' which had fallen off a tramp and lain baking and rotting by turns on a rubbish heap; they had to be tied on Smith with bits of rag and string. He drew dark shadows round Smith's eyes, and burning spots on his cheek-bones with some grease-paints he used when they travelled as 'The Great Steelman and Smith Combination Star Shakesperian Dramatic Co.' He damped Smith's hair to make it dark and lank and his face more corpse-like by comparison―in short, he 'made him up' to look like a man who had long passed the very last stage of consumption, and had been artificially kept alive in the interests of science.

'Now you're ready,' said Steelman to Smith, 'You left your the day before yesterday and started to walk to the hospital at Palmerston. An old mate picked you up dying on the road, brought you round, and carried you on his back most of the way here. You firmly believe that Providence had something to do with the sending of that old mate along at that time and place above all others. Your mate also was hard-up; he was going to a job―the first show for work he'd had in nine months―but he gave it up to