human
We will call next Monday Black Monday; for to me it means Holyhead, Dublin, Kerry, and tenants! blessed tenants! But not for always, added Flint suddenly;
gpt
I don't say 'ever afterwards;' why should you? Why should I be a slave to my Castle and you to your City? Why shouldn't we emigrate together?
human
Oh, I'm game!
gpt
Well, then, just hold on till I give Castle Flint the sack.
human
Or until it is sacked about your ears, suggested stroke jerkily.
gpt
But what nonsense you two are talking!
human
Not at all, Miss Edmonstone--if you will allow me. You can't expect a man to live out his life in troubled Ireland when there's a happy Australia to go to: there, you know, you may combine the blessings of liberty, equality, and Home Rule of the most advanced kind, with the peculiar satisfaction of calling yourself a staunch Tory, and believing it! But as for our friend here, station life would add a year to his life for every year the City is capable of shortening it. He'd make a first-rate jackeroo.
gpt
What is that?
human
What's a jackeroo? Oh, a young gentleman--for choice, the newest new chum to be found--who goes to a station to get Colonial experience. He has to work like a nigger, and revels in it, for a bit. If he is a black sheep, and has the antique ideas of the Colonies held by those who sent him out to whiten him, his illusions may last a couple of days; if he has read up Australia on the voyage, they will probably hold out a little longer, while he keeps looking for what his book told him he would find; the fact being that the modern bush life hasn't yet been done into English. Meanwhile he runs up the horses, rides round boundaries, mends fences, drives sheep to water--if it is a drought--and skins the dead ones, weighs out flour and sugar, cleans harness, camps anywhere, and lives on mutton and damper, and tea.
gpt
But what does he get for all that?
human
Rations and experience, replied Flint promptly.
gpt
When he's admitted to be worth his salt he will be asked to make other arrangements. Then some still newer new chum will be selected for the post, through the introductions he has brought to the stock and station agents, and in his turn will drive his teeth into the dirty work of the station, which the ordinary pound-a-week hands refuse, and so get his Colonial experience!
human
Thanks; I'll stop where I am,
gpt
He isn't fair, said Dick, speaking for the first time.
human
You know you aren't fair, old chap, raking up your own case as typical, when it was exceptional. Jackeroos are treated all right, and paid too, so long as they're smart and willing--the two things needful. Come, I've been a squatter myself, and can't hear my class run down.
gpt
You won't hear me defend the landlords on that ground,
human
Well, said Dick, experimentally,
gpt
Then I'll ride the boundaries!
human
In that case, added Flint quietly,
gpt
I'll apply for overseer's billet, with the right of sacking slack hands.