Mrs. Jupper.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVI, Issue 46, 22 August 1908, Page 10

Mrs. Jupper .

Mrs. Juppcr was the landlady of "The Old Bullock-Dray," a public-house in a small town on the Nambucca River, in Now South Wales. I had known her since I was an infant, and always had a great respect for her as soon as I was old enough to feel the sting of her bony right hand. She had been one of my mother's servants, had a face as plain as a brown stone jug, a tongue like the : slash of a stockwhip, a heart of gold, and a bony body nearly six feet long. She was no respecter of persons, was Hannah Jupper, had been in my mother's service for fifteen- years, and was the terror of all who were foolish enough to "knock agin" her, as she termed it. They never did it twice, as a rule. Even the local bullock-drivers would come into her kitchen for a drink of tea, hat in hand. If any one of them ventured toisit down unasked, Hannah would point her bony finger at him, hollow-iu her back, and say : < "Git, you slouchin' loofer !" (Sometimes she would prefix "loofer" with ai» adjective.) One evening' my brothers and I (I was tho youngest) came home from a long day's fishing on the beach, and, being exceedingly wet and dirty, were denied admission to supper, then in progress, and told to go to Hannah and get her to attend to our vacuums. Hannah spread the table, eyeing our strings of fish malevolently. "Who's agoin' ter clean those?" she enquired. "We ove, Hannah." ''Just as well ye is. If ye didn't, and I l-f : 'o-n here, I'd chuck 'em in the pigs' ! trough -„" "i rr.. TTrraiah," said one of my brothers ; ' this tea is awfully hot, and we are so thirsty. Give us some milk." "Not a blessed drop. It's all set for cream." , After we left the kitchen we went out to the back pantry, where ths great wide pans of milk were kept for cream. The door was locked, and Hannah had the key. One side of the pantry facing the yards, was covered in with wire netting to keep the place cool, and shelves on which the milk-pans sitood wane ranged all around, and tho beautiful look of -the cream made our hearts ache. Then a happy thought came to my brother Bill Bidding us be silent, he stole away to old Saker the gardener, and asked him for the loan of a new pipe. Sfiker always smoked the old-fashioned churchwardens when Dot at work, and, being a kind old soul, he gave the pipe. Bill came back on tiptoe, and broke off the bowl of tho pipe. "It's my first suck," he whispered, as he put one end of the pipe-stem into the milk and the other into his mouth. He drank till ha was tired ; then Ted followed; and when my turn came I was alone, and there was a visible depression in tho centre of the pan, and a sort of shelving beach of cream all round the side. ' I was thoroughly enjoying myself, when from bahind me came an awful "swish," and a supplejack cane dealt me an agonising blow on the thickest part of my body. I felt it all the more hs I was wearing thin duck trousers. "Git out, ye Bneakin' little bandicoot!" When she had been fifteen years with. , us Hannah received a proposal of marriage from a well-to-do German selector, and she accepted him. His name was Johannes Haekenstoffenheimer, or something liko that. Hannah did not like it, and frankly told him so immediately after tho ceremony. v VLook 'ere, John ; don't you let any I o' your friends call me by your full i name, or they'll be sorry. I don't mind being 'Mrs. Hack,' if you like, but I won't 'aye the rest of it. It sounds like a cow coughin' bad with pleuro. No, after all, I won't — I'll bo Mrs. Jupper, and ybu have to be Jupper. 'Mrs. Hack' I won't stand. I ain't a 'orse." The man with the long name and Hannah left our district and set up a combined public-house, general store, and butchery and bakery at the little township on the romantic Nambucca, where they did a thriving business with the teamsters and cedar-getters. Then came misfortune — Hannah's husband was drowned whilst swimming his horse-team across tha flooded river. Her brother then came to live with her and run tho butchery, bakery/ etc., while she attended to the public-house and her boarders. Tweh c years passed before I saw her again. I had come back after long years of wanderings in other lands on four I months' leave, home-sick, and ill with malarial fever. To get the poison out of my veins, I made a long tramp along the coast, fishing and shooting. One day I cams to "the Old Bullock-Dray." Hannah, now get/tine grey-haired, kissed me, gave me of her best, and I stayed there a week. She had several boarders — cedar-get-ters'—and as we all had our meals together I soon discovered that Hannah's tongue was caustic as ever. One day a traveller, a sewing machine agent canvassing the district, came and put up tor a few days. He was a vulgar little loudly-dressed and talkative aian, and wanted to have his meals alone. Hannah told him he could either "git" or eat with the rest of her boarders. She took a dislike to him. We were at supper — half a dozen hairy cedar-getters in their soiled clothing, the traveller, Hannah, and myself. Quoth the traveller to tho company generally : "Me, and another gentleman found a big black snake. It was lying on a log coiled up, and we was going to kill it, when we found it was dead." Hannah : "Who was t'other 'gentleman?' " Traveller : "Mr. Jarvis, the Kempsey draper." Hannah : "Well, all I can say is that if you call that measly little skunk of a Jarvis a gentleman, and consider yourself another, thare ain't no wonder tha snake was dead. It must ha' seen yous comin' along and coiled itself up' and died outer disgust at yous looks." (Loud guffaws from tho hairy men.) One broiling afternoon a buggy and a horseman hovo in sight and drew up at the "pub." The horseman was a big bushy-bearded man, with a ponderous pompous manner. Ho was tho Government Schools Truant Inspector, and was the brother of a now dead English author, famous for his stories of clerical life. The man in the buggy was the genial old Dr. Torregiani. Roman Catholic Bishop of Armidale. "How are you, Mrs. Jupper?" (every one called her Mrs. Jupper) said the bishop as he gave the reins to Hannah's blackboy. "Nicely, bishop, thank you. How's yourself? You look chipper." As I was shaking hands with the good doctor the black-boy was taking the saddle off tho Truant Inspector's horsa. Hannah was a stranger to that gentleman. "What can you give us to eat, my good woman ?" ho droned out. "Wait till yer see, my good man ; perhaps nothing at " Suddenly she stopped and pointed her long brown finger at his horse's back. It was raw and bleeding, and the saddle-cloth was saturated with blood. Then she turned again to the big man. "Well, you are n brute ! A great hulking cove like you to rid© a 'orse with a back like that. S'help me, Gosh, you oughter be shot ! Ougliterent he, bishop?" "Mrs. Jupper," I said to her, as she, tho hairy men, und I were having supoer on the Sunda.v nicht, "do you re-

member when you once caught me sucking your cream -pans?" "Courso I do. An' T remember how yous boys got even on me." Then, addressing the hairy men, "I 'ad a batch o' bread set afore the fire to raise, and when I comes to see 'ow it was a-gettin' on I finds a dead goanner buried in the dough, with its 'cad showin' out an' its mouth stuck open with a stick. Gosh ! they was orful kids !" — Tom Denison, in the Westminster Gazette.