The McGanns.

New Zealand Mail, 3 December 1896, Page 12

The McGanns.

A WINTRY BUSH SKETCH .

BY GERTRUDE MOORE.

CSpecially written for the New Zealand Milil.)

':Q' BENEZER/ calls his shrill-voiced Vjp/j mother from the next room, accompanying her call by a series of tremendous bangs on the wooden wall at her head.

The eleven-year-old boy raises himself wearily from his chaff pillow. ‘ Ebenezer, get up, you lazy young wretch. It’s nearly five o’clock/ says the hard, cross voice again; while the new baby and the two older babies all scream lustily. Ebenezer stretches his thin arms from among the blankets covering him and the sack-bottomed stretcher on which he lies.

‘ Right ye are, mother/ he shouts in his thin voice.

But the mother cannot hear him, the babies are crying too loudly. ‘ Ebenezer, Ebenezer, get up ; d’ye want yer mother to get up and get the cows in for the milking ?’ and she bangs on the wall with both hands.

The boy jumps out of bis poor bed, and is immediately seized with a fib of violent sneezing. ‘ All right, mother/ he yells, when he recovers a bit.

This time she hears him above the din, and settles herself to the hopeless task of soothing the baby, and quieting the quarrels of the others. Eb pulls on his tattered corduroy knickerbockers, and rushes out of the draughty little room, into another, fastening his garment on to his string braces as lie goes. There are only three rooms in this miserable house, and tiny draughty rooms at that.

The boy patters along the cold, bare wooden floor to his mother’s room. When there, he seizes one of the quarrelling children, a boy of eighteen months, and carries him into the third room.

‘ Liz, wake up/ he yells to his only sister.

Liz wakes up with a start and pokes her white, pinched face from among her blankets.

‘ You might look after this kid,’ he says. ‘Mother’s not well this morning.’ She takes the screaming, kicking child into her bed, and tries to quiet it. Eb takes an old felt hat, ornamented with big holes, and several sizes too large for him, and an old yellow oilskin overcoat from behind the door, hurriedly puts them on, and goes outside into the cold, dense fog and dim light, carefully shutting the rough door after him.

He goes to a tumble-down shed at the back, and gets his favourite stock-whip, a relic of happier, more prosperous days, when his shiftless father had a good farm, and a decent house for his comely wife and steadily increasing family to live in. The boy thinks of those dimly-remem-bered days now, as ho splashes his way across the wot, muddy paddocks. The fierce biting wind blows his buttonless coat wide open, and it flaps wet and cold round his bare, blue legs. He grasps tho edges of the coat and folds them to his thin little body and splashes on, singing in a high, cracked voice. ‘ It makes a lot of difference when you’re rich, when you’re rich.’ He had heard a cheap-jack singing tho comic song the last time he went to the little bush township, nine miles away, and has been trying hard all the week to remember tho tune; he can repeat all the words.

He is so interested in his song that he does not notice a big black log looming up in the dim light just in front of him. He walks up against it with a bump ; a bump which causes him to fall over backwards into the mud.

He picks himself up, and pauses for a while to cough ; and then ho climbs over the log, skinning his bare legs and foot as he goes on the sharp remains of the dead

bra nolle

The dead honeysuckle (rowarewa) is nearly a hundred feet long, and is three feet thick, so it is easier to climb it than to walk round it.

On he splashes, keeping his eyes well in front ot‘ him this time, but bravely tries to sing through his chattering teeth. The muddy, log-strewn paddocks are passed, the almost endless wire fences have been climbed through, and he comes to the big piece of standing bush. He does not quite know where the cows are, but he can hear the tinkling of their bells, so he knows they must be in the bush somewhere; and he peers through the fog and calls:

‘ Poley. Daisy.’ Pause, and a fit of sneezing. ‘Daisy. Molly.’ More sneezing. After about half an hour’s hunt, the tinkling sounds nearer. He climbs over logs, and through winding supple-jacks, and presently comes upon the half a dozen cows, feeding all together in a miserable, half-starved group. The cows know their duty, and move off along the narrow, muddy track in a body. Eb I'oilows, talking to them, shopidpring his beloved whip and shivering.

They leave the bush, and take their way along the mile of road, sinking in the soft mud, almost up to their udders, and the lightly-clad boy ploughs behind them, cracking; his whip now and then, and whistling ‘ When the kye come hame.’ Eb always tries to make the best of things, and be cheerful; he is the only one in the family who does so consistently. Liz, the sister, tries sometimes, but more often than not she is so weighted down with her untiring efforts to keep the six quarrelsome younger children in some kind of order that she has no heart, or time, to think of anything but them and the daily routine of work.

Mrs McCann, the mother, belongs to the class who only see the miserable and black side of everything—a class which is too common, alas, even in fair New Zealand. She is weak-spirited, a very bad manager, and she allows her bodily and mental troubles to weight her down to the ground. If she would only wake up from her dreaming of former good days, would only make the best of things, and work, as her eldest son and daughter try to do, even their miserable, poverty-stricken home could be made happy. It is not right to expect a poor weak girl of twelve to do everything; the mother, with her wider knowledge, should cooperate with her struggling elder children ; things might be made better, at any rate. What does ignorant little Lizzie know of the training of babies' tempers ? What does she know of the cure and causes of those awful colds that threaten to launch the whole family into the sea of consumption ?

She does try to fill up some of the holes in the house with sacking : but she knows nothing of the rules of sufficient clothing ; and her mother —though she knows —has never told her of the many cures which are to be had in the bush, which cost nothing, but are to be had for the mere gathering.

Lizzie did make some linseed tea last winter, with plenty of bush honey in it—one of the flaxmillers’ wives told her how —but her mother scolded her for messing the only saucepan they owned, and filling all the jugs in the house, and ‘for messy stuff like that, that did the children no good ’; so Lizzie, though she thought they had not tried it long enough, made no more linseed tea.

The fog has not lifted, but the cold grey dawn has come, and Eb can see Lizzie’s fire flickering through the window.

‘ I wonder if that lazy young Pat is up ? he muses. ‘ A youngster of ten ought to be more use to the home than he is/ he thinks, in his manly way. Attracted by the cow-bells, three barefooted children scamper to meet him. Two of them, white-headed young imps of nine and six, run behind the last two cows, hanging on to their tails. ‘ Hallo, Eb, you’ve been a long time/ cries Pat. ‘ Mother’s in an awful state.’

‘ Why didn’t you come and help me ? I should have been quicker then/ says Eb. ‘ Too dashed cold/ says Pat. 'Who mad© the fire ?’ asks Eb. * Liz/ answers Pat. ' And who chopped the wood ? Did yori ?’

' No/ sulkily. Eb and Pat get three buckets and the three punga blocks which serve as milking stools, and splash their way to the cows. On their way they are joined by the sister. 'You go in, Liz/ says Eb. ' I’ll take your cows this morning. Your cold’s worse/ 'Oh, I’ll be all right/ says the girl, taking her bucket and stool from Pat, and drawing a piece of thin flannelette, that she wears as a shawl, closer round her thin shoulders. They bail up the cows, and commence milking. The bails are patent bush affairs ; being two pieces of scantling fixed between two logs. The upper piece is movable. The cow is placed with its neck over the lower bar, and the upper one is brought down on the back of its neck ; then the two projecting ends are tied together with a piece of rope. There are only two bails ; but Lizzie’s cows are quiet, and stand still while she milks them. The children sit in the cold wind, shouting now and then to each other; and the milking goes on quietly. Only one of the patient animals proves anything like unruly. This is Pat’s first one, and it only puts one of its hoofs into the bucket; thereby spoiling half a bucketful of precious milk. Pat throws the milk away and starts again, resolving not to tell his mother anything about it. He does not know that young Dill, the six-year-old, caused the disturbance, by poking the cow with a big nail. * =* * if Mrs McCann manages to oka out a living by selling milk to the saw millers and fiaxmillers who form that little settlement beyond the clump of standing bush. The milking is over, the cows are turned out into the road, and the milk strained and measured out into the billies and bottles. The children have just finished their breakfast of porridge and milk, and are loading up for their morning milk round.

Bill is not to be trusted yet, but Sam, aged nine, and the three elder children are armed with canvas bags, one on their backs, and one in front. These bags are divided into compartments for the bottles ; and each child takes a billy in each hand. Eb takes three billies.

‘ Have you got the pint measures ?’ asks the pale, thin-faced mother. ‘ Yes, mother/ they answer ; and off they start on their cold, dreary round, all minus boots and stockings. They all have hats, of a kind, and the boys have flannelette jackets, in addition to their corduroy knickers and old oilskin coats. Lizzie has her yard of flannelette pinned closely round her neck; gn4 a neat, clean, though thin, dress,

‘ Did you fasten all the slip-panels, Eb ?’ shouts his mother.

‘Yes, mother/ comes back through the fog. The careless, thoughtless mother closes the door with a bang and sits down in front of the fire, to sigh for the brighter past, when she had a man and woman servant ; atid to dream of the merry, careless husband who went to Wellington nearly a year ago, for —goodness only knows what —she does not know. *

Meantime, the remaining children scream, and fight to their heart’s content.

When the milk deliverers return it is past eight o’clock. The fire is nearly out, the babies are asleep on the floor, and the mother has fainted, or gone to sleep—the children cannot decide which. Liz rubs her cold hands, while Eb makes up the fire. Presently she revives, and goes to lie down; and the boys, under the superintendence of Eb, get a warm bath, preparatory to going to school.

Even in this remote district there is a truant inspector. He is appointed by the school committee—of sawmillers—and he does his duty by summonsing the parents of children whose names are on the school books and who do not attend at least three of the five school days. Lizzie’s name has never been on the books of this school, but the boys always attend regularly.

They are not alarmed about their mother, they are used to the same kind of thing, and no one ever helps them, their nearest neighbours are the sawmillers — two miles away. Liz attends her mother, quiets the babies, and prepared the boys’ lunch.

By the time they are ready, Mrs McCann is her usual self; and she and Liz go to see the boys start. They are all tidy and clean, though bare-footed, and they all four climb from a log on to the back of the big, raw-boned horse. ‘ Whoa, Brownie/ says Liz, who is holding the rope bridle, and who has the barefooted twins hanging on to her. Then she gives Eb the basket of lunch, and they start through the fog and mud. Mud, fog and water are big factors in this dreary bush sum. ‘Me too, me too/ scream the twins. ‘No, Eb will give you a ride to-night/ Lizzie tells them.

* Say ta-ta, boys. Hold tight, Pat and Sam. Bill, you hold tight to Pat. Ta-ta, boys, take care of yourselves.’ ‘ Ta-ta, Liz. Ta-ta, mother/ call the boys. Liz and the mother wave their hands in return, and Liz picks up the twins, one under each arm; and mother and little daughter are left alone with the babies again. Mrs McCann gets a novel, and Lizzie struggles with the work and babies, who insist on going with her to feed the fowls and pigs. She tucks the two-month-old baby, .wrapped up in a small blanket, under one arm, the twins hang on to her dress, and she carries the fowls’ food under the ©ther arm.

When she has to open the door or slippanels she balances the milk-pan full of food on one knee. She is used to it, so she manages. The boys reach the little wooden aided school a quarter of an hour late. However, as they are in time for the roll-call, the little white-faced consumptive school-mistress excuses them ; so they patter to their places among the other bare-footed children.