Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/212

 see you through; he'd give up his life rather than desert a mate in trouble. You only want a couple of shillings or a bit of tucker to help you on to Palmerston. You know you've got to die, and you only want to live long enough to get word to your poor old mother, and die on a bed.

'Remember, they're Scotch up at that house. You understand the Scotch barrack pretty well by now―if you don't it ain't my fault. You were born in Aberdeen, but came out too young to remember much about the town. Your father's dead. You ran away to sea and came out in the Bobbie Burns to Sydney. Your poor old mother's in Aberdeen now―Bruce or Wallace Wynd will do. Your mother might be dead now―poor old soul! any way, you'll never see her again. You wish you'd never run away from home. You wish you'd been a better son to your poor old mother; you wish you'd written to her and answered her last letter. You only want to live long enough to write home and ask for forgiveness and a blessing before you die. If you had a drop of spirits of some sort to brace you up you might get along the road better. (Put this delicately.) Get the whine out of your voice and breathe with a wheeze―like this; get up the nearest approach to a death-rattle that you can. Move as if you were badly hurt in your wind―like this. (If you don't do it better 'n that, I'll stoush you.) Make your face a bit longer and keep your lips dry―don't lick them, you damned fool!―breathe on them; make 'em dry as chips. That's the only decent pair of you've got, and the only "." You're a Presbyterian―not a U.P., the Auld Kirk. Your