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Updated: May 22, 2025
Her mother said it was how she was kept awake all the night with the walking about of some one in the next room, tumbling about boxes, and pulling over drawers, and talking and sighing to himself, and she, poor thing, wishing to go asleep, and wondering who it could be, when in he comes, a fine man, in a sort of loose silk morning-dress, an' no wig, but a velvet cap on, and to the windy with him quiet and aisy, and she makes a turn in the bed to let him know there was some one there, thinking he'd go away, but instead of that, over he comes to the side of the bed, looking very bad, and says something to her but his speech was thick and choakin' like a dummy's that id be trying to spake and she grew very frightened, and says she, 'I ask your honour's pardon, Sir, but I can't hear you right, and with that he stretches up his neck nigh out of his cravat, turning his face up towards the ceiling, and grace between us and harm! his throat was cut across, and wide open; she seen no more, but dropped in a dead faint in the bed, and back to her mother with her in the morning, and she never swallied bit or sup more, only she just sat by the fire holding her mother's hand, crying and trembling, and peepin' over her shoulder, and starting with every sound, till she took the fever and died, poor thing, not five weeks after.
"Hot-water bottles and screens," it said variously. "Take her temperature. Don't be frightened! There'll be a doctor in a minute." The girl lay on the bed with her eyes shut. It was Irish Delia who saw the Dummy and raised a cry. "Look at the Dummy!" she said. "He's crying." The Dummy's world had always been a small one.
The body of water passed him. A thousand tresses of foam reminding him of his Granny's hair swept across his fingers. He looked up. He was kneeling on a tiny strip of beach at the foot of the cliff. On his left sprawled the old Commander. His knees, cocked by the receding wave, swayed and toppled now; the legs wooden and dreadful as a dummy's. Kit crawled towards him. "Are you hurt, sir?"
Dad told him to fetch it to see if it would suck. Joe fetched it, and it sucked ravenously at "Dummy's" flank, and joyfully wagged its tail. "Dummy" resented it. She plunged until the leg-rope parted again, when the calf got mixed up in her legs, and she trampled it in the ground. Joe took it away. Dad turned "Dummy" out and bailed her up the next day and every day for a week with the same result.
Whenever the draught horse's knees gave way and he stumbled forward, he jerked the lighter horse back into the plough, and something would break. Then Tom would blaspheme till he was refreshed, mend up things with wire and bits of clothes-line, fill his pockets with stones to throw at the team, and start again. Finally he hired a dummy's child to drive the horses.
Vandover sat behind the Dummy's chair, watching his game, but at length, worn out, he began to drop off to sleep, waking every now and then with a sudden leap and recoil of all his nerves. An hour later the persistent scratching of a match awoke him. Ellis and the Dummy were still playing, and the Dummy was once more relighting the stump of his cigar.
Moreover the youth was cheeky, and the selector's temper had been soured: he cursed the boy along with the horses, the plough, the selection, the squatter, and Australia. Yes, he cursed Australia. The boy cursed back, was chastised, and immediately went home and brought his father. Then the dummy's dog tackled the selector's dog and this precipitated things.
Then the mother made of the smoking sausage a necktie for the dummy. She tied it very tight around the neck with string, and when she had finished she untied the dog. With one leap the beast jumped at the dummy's throat, and with her paws on its shoulders she began to tear at it.
Then, after a long spell of illness in a Union infirmary, she began to grow noticeably odder and stranger in her looks and ways; until at length the children shouted "Mad Bell" as she passed, and that became her recognised style and title. Such, briefly, had been her experience of life, when one September evening she came by chance to Big Anne and the Dummy's door.
At one time he would bet heavily on worthless cards, and at another would throw back nines and tens for no apparent reason. Finally Ellis dealt him a queen, which he kept, betting ten chips. His next card was a seven-spot. He signed to Ellis that he would stand. Ellis drew twenty in three cards. Vandover could not restrain an exclamation of impatience at the Dummy's stupidity.
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