THE PROVING OF DANNIE M'RAE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3085, 30 April 1913, Page 82

THE PROVING OF DANNIE M'RAE.

Bv Shasta

Mrs M‘Rae sat in her bare kitchen before a Jog fire. By the light of a kerosene lamp she was carefully mending a boy’s goat. The wood fire leapt and crackled in the great wooden chimney, and threw its dancing light over the rough pine dresser, with its common china, and glimmering upon the almanacs on the walls. Children’s clothes lay in a tumbled heap on the home-made sofa. Two little girls, in bed in the next room, were watching, the light through the open door. “ Is Dannie home yet, mother?” a sleeply voice called from beneath the patched quilt. “No, dearie; but he won’t be long now,” she answered reassuringly. Save for the crackling of the fire there was silence, and the mother knew that the children had fallen asleep at last. She laid the coat upon her knee, and carefully scrutinised the patch. It wasn’t very noticeable, and fortunately Ronald was too ordinary a boy to be distressed by a patched coat. “ It’s better’n a hole, mum,” he’d say carelessly. Truly, her children were a great comfort. She glanced at the clock, and an anxious expression crossed her thin, lined face. “ I wonder what’s keepin’ Dannie. I’m feared his tea will be spoilt,” she murmured anxiously, and, drawing out the chimney-crane, she peered into the camp-oven, wherein a piece of mutton and some roast potatoes sizzled cheerfully. She quickly laid out the things for a simple meal, then she listened at the bedroom door. There was a sound of measured breathing. “ They’re asleep, poor dears. But I wonder what’s keepin’ Dannie”—her concern increased as she gave room to nameless fears. She threw open the kitchen door, and stood listening intently. She was gazing into the vibrant stillness of a frosty night. The shaft of light from the open doorway fell athwart the boarded footway and out on to the edge of the eabbage-bed. The weird shapes of dead trees loomed ghostily in the dim light of the stars, and beyond was the impenetrable darkness of the hush. The sound of jingling harness and rattling dray wheels reached her ears. “ He’s coinin’ at last—he’s at the road gate,” she whispered, thankfully, and, closing the door, went lightly about the preparations for his fneal. When at last there was a step upon the board walk her face wore an expression of determined cheerfulness, and she welcomed her . son with a quiet smile. “You’re late, Dannie.” she said briskly. A big, loose-limbed boy stood blinking in the light. Methodically he blew out the stable lantern, removed the overcoat that had been his father’s, and unwound a warm knitted muffler from .about his throat. “Yes, mother, the road is pretty bad, and Boss cast a shoe, and I couldn't travel the horses any faster. Are the children long in bed?” “They sat up as long as they could—waitin’ ” “ There’s black-balls in my pocket for them in the mornin’,” he said, and moved to a chair . The lad removed his heavy hoots, and sat very still, resting. His mother sighed. He was very young to do a man’s work. “ Better have your tea, Dannie,” she reminded him gently. He roused himself then, and ate the food hungrily, without paying much attention to it. His mind was running on other matters. “ We gob the wire and the staples, mother. Harry Munro is cornin’ tomorrow to help with the fencin’.” “ Harry Munro is a kind neighbour, Dannie. I don’t know how we’d have managed without him,” Mrs M‘Rae said cordially, maintaining the same tight grip npor her cheerfulness. “We’ll get the fencin’ done and the clearin’ finished in time to plough in tbo spring, mother.” “Your father planned to plough come the spring, Dannie.” .A sudden rush of tears dimmed her vision. There was a strained silence. The lad, Ins shoulders drooping with weariness, seemed too tired for further speech. “ I’ll take father’s place as well as I can, mother,” bn said, with gentle reassurance. “ I’ll go to bed now. I m awful tired ” “ You’re a good laddie,” bis mother said chokingly. She reached a candle from the mantelshelf, lighted it, and handed it to him with no further word. The M'Raes were not a family to indulge anv display of emotion. Dannie soon lay fast asleep beside his

brother Ronald; but Iris mother lay awake far into the night. She grieved that so heavy a burden had been laid upon Dannie’s youthful shoulders. She thought over the hard years that had passed since they settled" in the bush; how she and her husband had worked and saved to build their small house, to build cow-bails and stable, to buy their stock and the necessary implements. How they had cleared land and sown grass, and felt themselves on a clear way to a modest living, and then had come that terrible day when her husband was killed in the bush —killed outright by a falling tree. It was hard, terribly hard, and Daryjie such a lad. Then she, ton, fell asleep. With Boss in the traces Dannie sledged the stakes out to the clearing* Cutting those stakes was the last piece of work he and his father had done together. Boss was a light bay horse, with a great white blaze down his ugly face, and three white feet. Big, raw-boned, clumsy, his great feet plunged and splashed all over the track; but Daniel knew he was the hones test horse that ever sledged stakes down a muddy bush track. Dannie M'Rae was fired with a fierce, unyielding determination to do everything as his father would have done it. It had been his father’s pride that there was no slummocking, slip-shed work done on his place, and it would be Dannie’s pride also. The clearing was fenced, and the last stump, with the brown peat clinging to its roots, dragged out and loft aside to dry for firewood. The birds were singing in the bush, the clematis was budding; before long the kowhai would be blossoming, and the first cuckoo would go dancing across the clearing. It was time the ploughing was begun. Dannie had the ploughshare sharpened. He mended Boss’s collar and repaired Belle’s winkers. Belle was a pretty little mare whose fine proportions made Boss look more odd and lumbering by contrast; but they were good team mates. Dannie knew there wasn’t a better working team in all Kaiwara Bush. Mrs M'Rae’s thoughts also centred round the clearing. “Your father thought to plant potatoes come the spring, Dannie,” she reminded him. “I haven’t forgotten, mother.” “You’ll be getting Harry Munro to do the ploughing for you?” she inquired timidly. She didn’t hold with a woman interfering in men’s affairs, and' the farm was Dannie’s affair now. “I’m thinkin’ to do it myself, mother,'’ he replied soberly. “You’re terrible like your father, Dannie,” said she proudly, and the boy's face lighten at her praise. His father had been his hero. On the first day of spring Dannie yoked his team to the plough, and started for the clearing. Harry Munro opened the first break, slowly, that Dannie might learn how it was dene. It was not till the third day that Dannie felt proficient enough to begin ploughing in potatoes. Ronald and his sister Bertha followed the plough all day, putting the seed in the furrows; Dannie followed, covering one furrow and opening another —up and down, down and up. till the last furrow was opened. The children scampered home, rejoicing that their hard task was at an end. Mrs M'Rae watched her son struggling up on the last round. He had done nobly. She would be with him at the crest of his pride.- She left her work and hurried to the paddock. She expected to find him, smiling, triumphant, the light of achievement shining in his eyes. She expected to hear him say: “Wait till I get that other bit harrowed and sowed to turnips, and you’ll see a pretty job of work, mother.” She hastened to share his triumph. The horses, with drooping heads, were standing near the slip-rails, Boss’s great underlip drooping hungrily. Her eyes searched the paddock for a lithe young figure in faded dungarees. At last she saw a huddled patch of blue on grassy headland. It had been a warm, sunny, spring day, with a light breeze shaking the daffodils that grew by her kitchen door. In the grass beneath her feet dandelions raised their golden discs from out their whorls of ragged leaves. “He’ll be tired, pnir laddie,” she whispered concernedly, hurrying to his side. Then she saw that he was lying face forward in the grass, and heard that he was sobbing. “ I did it, faiher,” she heard him cry brokenly. “Pair laddie, puir wee laddie!” she whispered pitifully. Then she sped away more swiftly and more silently than she had come. It was not a moment for any one to share, least of all his mother. She knew that lie would come up to the stable, riding sideways on Belle’s back and whistling jauntily—knew that when his stable work was done he would come to her. “I have finished, mother,” he would say, a grave happiness shining in his eyes; “and, mother, I think I’ve made a good job of it,” he would add naively. She knew the heart of her son. “You’re a man now, laddie,” she would sav bravely, for his mother’s praise still rang sweetly in Dannie’s ears. Her heart would be very tender because of what she had seen out on the headland in the clearing; very tender because she knew that beneath all his assumption of manliness, his strenuous desire to prove himself the son of his father, beneath it all her son still bad the pure remembering heart of a loving child. They would go indoors together, thankfully, trustfully, with a sober faith in the future, for Dannie M'Rae had proved himself worthy to take a man’s place, worthy to take up the burden his father had lain down.