Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/363

 the beginning of the end of old times and old things. We were plasterers, bricklayers, painters, a carpenter, a labourer, and a plumber, and were all suffering more or less―mostly more―and pretty equally, because of the dearth of regular graft, and the consequent frequency of the occasions on which we did'nt hold it―the 'it' being the price of one or more long beers. We had worked together on jobs in the city and up country, especially in the country, and had had good times together when things were 'locomotive,' as Jack put it; and we always managed to worry along cheerfully when things were 'stationary.' On more than one big job up the country our fortnightly spree was a local institution while it lasted, a thing that was looked forward to by all parties, whether immediately concerned or otherwise (and all were concerned more or less), a thing to be looked back to and talked over until next pay day came. It was a matter for anxiety and regret to the local business people and publicans, and loafers and spielers, when our jobs were finished and we left.

There were between us the bonds of graft, of old times, of poverty, of vagabondage and sin, and in spite of all the right thinking person may think, say or write, there was between us that sympathy which in our times and conditions is the strongest and perhaps the truest of all human qualities, the sympathy of drink. We were drinking mates together. We were wrong-thinking persons too, and that was another bond of sympathy between us.

There were cakes of tobacco, and books, and papers, and several flasks of 'rye-buck'―our push being