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This glorious event over, interest became focused on a trotting race, which brought out a queer assortment of competitors, ranging from King Lightfoot, a horse well known in Melbourne, to Poddy, an animal apparently more fitted to draw a hearse than to trot in a race a lean, raw-boned horse of a sad countenance and a long nose, with a shaggy black coat which rather resembled that of a long-haired Irish goat.
"Stribble?" says I. "Oh, yes, the poddy old party who did all the hard sitting around while his wife did the work. What reminded you of them?" "I'm sure I don't know," says Vee. "But a month or so ago I saw the name printed in an army list of returned casualty cases there was a boy, you know, and a girl and I thought then that we ought to look them up and find out.
It was not pleasant for her to hear what Sir Charles Poddy had said about the tobacco and brandy of the man she was just going to marry. She would sooner have heard of his riding sixty miles a day, or dancing all night, as she might have heard had she been contented to take Harry Clavering.
"Come up, old chap," the letter continued, "and stay a week two, if you can work it and bring Bender, and little Billy and Poddy, and three or four more. The bungalow holds ten. Wire when I'm now putting things on ice." Muggles looked around the circle and sent interrogatory Marconigrams with his eyebrows. In response Podvine said he'd go, and so did Billy Salters.
"Nor a club, either?" I asks. He takes off his cap and rubs his right ear. Seems to help, too. "Oh, yes," says he. "I remember now. There was an old boy carried one in along about 10 o'clock. A new one that he'd just bought, I expect." "Sort of a poddy, heavy set old party with a smooth face?" I suggests. "That was him," says the starter. "He's a reg'lar fiend at it.
Yah! These pagan meditations were interrupted by a footfall slowly approaching. I did not turn to ascertain who it might be, but trusted it was no one of importance, as the poddy and I presented rather a grotesque appearance. It was one of the most miserable and sickly of its miserable kind, and I was in the working uniform of the Australian peasantry.
"You always were pretty cock-sure of yourself, Poddy, even back in the days when we both worked on the old Tribune," commented Ferguson with a smirk of amusement. "But this proposition of yours is the deckle-edged limit and no mistake. If you were anybody else I'd have a lot of fun kicking you downstairs!" "Old stuff, Fergey!" grinned Podmore, unperturbed.
"It is laughin' ye'd be, wid these loonattic images gittin' away on us !" Further eloquence on Murty's part was checked by a determined rush on the part of a red and white calf, which would certainly have ended in freedom but for a well-aimed clod, which, hurled by the Irishman, took the poddy squarely between the eyes and induced him to pull up and meditate.
This was hard work, and my father was slaving away in the sun, and mine was arduous labour, and it was a very hot day, and a drought-smitten and a long day, and poddy calves ever have a tendency to make me moralize and snarl. This was life, my life and my parents' life, and the life of those around us, and if I was a good girl and honoured my parents I would he rewarded with a long stretch of it.
King Lightfoot, however, obstinately refused to trot, whereas Poddy revealed unexpected powers, flinging his long legs abroad in a whirlwind fashion, and pounding along doggedly, with his long nose outstretched as if hoping to get it past the winning-post as soon as possible.
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