Rolf Boldrewood

“ He has the devil's luck as well as his own, but I always used to tell him it would fail him yet.'
`I believe you're the smartest man of the crowd, dad,' says Jim, laying his hand on father's shoulder. He could pretty nigh get round the old chap once in a way, could Jim, surly as he was. `What do you think we'd better do? What's our best dart?'
Father shook off his hand, but not roughly, and his voice wasn't so hard when he said—
`Why, stop at home quiet, of course, and sleep in your beds at night. Don't go planting in the gully, or some one 'll think you're wanted, and let on to the police. ”

“ Aileen had jumped down by this time, and had thrown her rein to Jim, so we rode up to the stable, and a very good one it was, not long put up, that we could see. How the place had changed, and how different it was from ours! We remembered the time when their hut wasn't a patch on ours, when old Isaac Storefield, that had been gardener at Mulgoa to some of the big gentlemen in the old days, had saved a bit of money and taken up a farm; but bit by bit their place had been getting better and bigger every year, while ours had stood still and now was going back. ”

“ I was back with the old mare and Bilbah in mighty short time. I rode 'em night and day, turn about, and they can both travel. You kept pretty quiet, as luck had it, and was off to Melbourne quick. I don't really believe they dropped to any of us, bar Starlight; and if they don't nab him we might get shut of it altogether. I've known worse things as never turned up in this world, and never will now.' Here the old man showed his teeth as if he were going to laugh, but thought better of it.
`Anyhow, we'd made it up to come home at Christmas,' says Jim; `but it's all one. ”

“ I knew she'd be glad to see me—but, bless you, she and mother cared more for Jim's little finger than for my whole body. Some people have a way of gettin' the biggest share of nearly everybody's liking that comes next or anigh 'em. I don't know how it's done, or what works it. But so it is; and Jim could always count on every man, woman, and child, wherever he lived, wearing his colours and backing him right out, through thick and thin.
When I came up Aileen was saying—
`Oh, Jim, my dear old Jim! now I'll die happy ”

“ He's going to lay it all down in lucerne, he says.'
`And then he'll smarten up the cottage, and sister Aileen 'll go over, and live in it,' says Jim; `and a better thing she couldn't do.'
`I don't know,' she said. `Poor George, I wish I was fonder of him. There never was a better man, I believe; but I cannot leave mother yet, so it's no use talking.' Then she got up and went in.
`That's the way of the world,' says Jim. `George worships the ground she treads on, and she can't make herself care two straws about him. Perhaps she will in time. ”

“ It seems to me the older people get the more miserable they get in this world. If they don't make misery for themselves other people do it for 'em; or just when everything's going straight, and they're doing their duty first-rate and all that, some accident happens 'em just as if they was the worst people in the world. ”

“ It would have saved us a deal of trouble in our minds all the same if we'd known there was no warrants out after us two. I wonder if they'll nail Starlight.'
`They can't be well off it,' says father. `He's gone off his head, and stopped in some swell town in New Zealand—Canterbury, I think it's called—livin' tiptop among a lot of young English swells, instead of makin' off for the Islands, as he laid out to do.'
`How do you know he's there?' I said. ”