MRS. JUPPER.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume IX, Issue 260, 28 August 1908, Page 6 (Supplement)

MRS. JUPPER.

A SKE'ICH OF AUSTRALIAN LIFE,

Mrs Jupper was the landlady of “The Old Bullock-Dray,” a public house in a small town on the Namhucca Rive;, in New South Wales. I had known her since I was an infant, and always nad a groat respect for her as soon as I was old enough to feel the ling of her bony right hand. She -ad been one of my mother’s servants,. had a face as plain as a brown jug, a tongue like the slash of a Pwockwhip, a heart of gold and a bony body nearly six feet long. She was n<> respecter of persons, was Hannah Jupper, had been in my mother’s service for fifteen ypars, 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 rulb. Even the local bullock drivers come into her kitchen for a drink, hat in hand. If any one of them ventured to sit down unasked, Hannah would point her bony finger at him, hollow-in her back, and say: Git, you slouchin’ loofer! Sometimes she would prefix ‘loofer’ with an adjective.

One evening my brothers and I (I was the 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 are, Hannah.

Just as well ye is. If ye didn't, and lef ’ ’em here, I’d chuck ’em in the pigs’ troughs. I say, Hannah, 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 the great wide pans of milk wore kept for cream. The door was locked, and Hannah had the key. One aide of the pantry facing the yards was covered in with wire netting to keep the place cool, and shelves on which the milk pans stood were ranged all around, and the beautiful look of the cream made our hearts ache. Then a happy thought came to my brother Bill. Bidding us be quiet, he stole away to old Saker, the gardener, and asked him for the loan of a new pipe. Saker always smoked the old-fashioned churchwardens when not at work, and being a kind old soul, he gave the pipe. Bill came back on tiptoe, and broke off the bowl of the 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 he was tired; then Ted followed; and when my turn came I was alone, and there was a visible depression in the centre of the pan, and a sort of shelving beach of cream all round the side.

1 was thoroughly enjoying myself, when from behind 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 as I was wearing thin duck trousers.

Git out, ye sneakin’ little bandicoot!

When she had been fifteen years with us Hannah had received a proposal of marriage from a well-to-do German selector, and she accepted him. His name was Johannes Hackenstoffenheimer, or something like that. Hannah did not like it, and frankly told him so immediately after the ceremony. Look 'ere John; don’t you let any of your friends call me by your full name, or they’ll be sorry. I don’t mind being‘Mrs Hack/ if you like, but I won’t ’ave the rest of it. It sounds like a cow coughin' bad with plsuro. JNo, a’ter all, I won’t—l’ll be Mrs Jupper, and you have to be Jupper. ‘Mrs Hack’l 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 of 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 the flooded river. Her brother then came to live with her and run the butchery, bakerv, etc., while she attended to the public-house and her boarders. Twelve*years passed before I saw her again. 1 had come back after long . years of wanderings in other lands on four months’ leave, homesick, and ill with malaria fever. To got the poison out of my leg veins, I made a long tramp along the roast, fishing an I shooting. One day I came to “the O- J Bullock Dray.” Hannah, now g { '.t og grey-haired, kissed me, gave me of het best, and I stayed there a week.

She h d several boarders—cedargetters- nd as we all had our meals together I soon discovered that Hannah's tongue was as SAUStIc as

ever. One (fay a traveller, a sewidg machine agent canvassing the district, came and put up for a few days. He was a vulgar little loudly-dressed and talkative man, and wanted to have his meals alone. Hannah told him be could either “git” or eat with the rest of her boarders. She took a dislike to him.

Wc were at supper—half a dozen hairy cedar-getters in their soiled clothing, the traveller, Hannah, and myself. Quoth the traveller to the 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, there ain’t no wonder the snake was dead. It must ha’ seen yous cornin’ along and coiled itself up and died outer disgust at your looks. (Loud guffaws from the hairy men.)

One broiling afternoon a buggy and a horseman hove in sigh and drew up at the “pub.” The horseman was a big bushy-bearded man with a pompous manner. He was the 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 Torregiai, Roman Catholic Bishop of Armidale.

How are you, Mrs Jupper? (everyone 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 the Truant Inspector’s horse. Hannah was a stranger to that gentleman. What can you give us to eat, my good woman? he 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 a brute! A great hulking cove like you to ride a ’orse like that. S’help me, Gosh, you oughter be shot! Oughterent he, bishop?

Mrs Jupper, I said to her, as she, the hairy men, and I were having tea on the Sunday night, do you remember when you once caught me sucking your cream-pans?

Course I do. An' I remember how yous boys got even on me. Then, addressing the hairy men, I 'ad a batch o’ bread set afore the tire to raise, and when I comes to see ’ow it was a-gettin on finds a dead goanner hurried in the dough, with its 'ead showin’ out an’ its mouth stuck open with a stick. Gosh! they was orful kids!—Tom Denlison, in the Westminister Gazette.