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He'll cut out to see her in a little while, more than likely, but he'll come drifting back with the shearers in the spring like he always does. It seems to me like everybody comes back to the sheep country that's ever lived in it a while. I wonder if I'd want to come back, too?" It was a speculation upon which Mackenzie did not feel called to make comment.
The body of the woolshed, floored with battens placed half an inch apart, is filled with the woolly victims. This enclosure is subdivided into minor pens, of which each fronts the place of two shearers, who catch from it until the pen is empty. When this takes place, a man for the purpose refills it.
He hated low cunnin' an' suspicion, and when a gory mate got suspicious of his own old mate and wouldn't trust him, an' took to plantin' his crimson money it was time to leave him. Bill and Jim, professional shearers, were coming into Bourke from the Queensland side. They were horsemen and had two packhorses.
I wonder you don't leave such talk to fellows like Frowser, that's always spouting at the Shearers' Arms. 'Nonsense or not, if a dry season comes and knocks all our work over, I shall help myself to some one's stuff that has more than he knows what to do with. 'Why can't we all go shearing, and make as much as will keep us for six months? said George.
"Then, I suppose, Dick," continued William, "you have been quieter lately, since Mr. Smith was killed." "Yes, sir, we've been somewhat quieter of late," replied the man; "but we expect to get a turn again soon. The shearers round the stations will be done their work shortly, and they'll be in with their cheques.
Recovering from the softer impressions produced by Bathsheba's voice, the shearers rose to leave, Coggan turning to Pennyways as he pushed back the bench to pass out: "I like to give praise where praise is due, and the man deserves it that 'a do so." he remarked, looking at the worthy thief, as if he were the masterpiece of some world-renowned artist.
But when we saw that beautiful, delicate-looking creature stepping down the boards between the two rows of shearers, most of them stripped to their jerseys and working like steam-engines, looking curiously and pitifully at the tired men and the patient sheep, with her great, soft, dark eyes and fair white face like a lily, we began to think we'd heard of angels from heaven, but never seen one before.
Consequently property-owners were not only cut down to one vote in one district at a general election, but were prevented from voting in another district at a by-election. The right to vote by letter was extended from seamen to shearers. But much the greatest extension of the franchise was the giving it to women.
Still more was it the silence of perfect, unresisting submission, 'as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He openeth not His mouth. And it is a pattern for us, as Peter tells us in his Epistle; for it is with regard to this very matter of taking unjust suffering patiently and without resistance that the apostle says that Jesus has 'left us an example. There are limits to such silent endurance of wrong, for Paul defended himself tooth and nail before priests and kings; but Christ's followers are strongest by meek patience, and descend when they take a leaf out of their enemies' book.
So our friend Mr Gordon, wise from many tens of thousands of shorn sheep that have been counted out past his steady eye, criticises temperately, but watchfully. He reproves sufficiently, and no more, any glaring fault; makes his calculation as to who are really bad shearers, and can be discharged without loss to the commonwealth, or who can shear fairly and can be coached up to a decent average.