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On each flank of the gang march overseers armed with swords and rattans that would be quick to descend on the back and loins of any shirker. In its lower division two or three of these slave-drivers may be seen with their hands raised against the workmen; in one case the latter sinks to the ground beneath the blows rained upon him.
He had been petted, teased, humored, exhibited, coddled, fooled with everything save properly trained and broken. So he grew up a trace shirker and a halter-puller, with disposition, temperament, and general behavior as uneven as his coloring. "The most good-fer-nothin' animal I ever wasted grain on!" declared Uncle Enoch.
All unknowingly he made me realize that I had been a bit of a coward and a shirker. I began to understand that my personal woes were not the most important things in the universe, even to myself. In short, Abel taught me to laugh again; and when a man can laugh wholesomely things are not going too badly with him. That old garden was always such a cheery place.
If poor Polly's happiness lay in linking her tender arms round such a heartless prig as the sneak who has deceived her, she might have been happy now as happy as Raymond Raymond in the ballad, with the stone statue by his side. She is wretched because Mr. Serjeant Shirker worships money and ambition, and is a Snob and a coward.
"I've been a fool," he said, "an idiot, and, what is more, an unnatural and neglectful father, cruel to my children when I meant to be kind, a shirker of my duty, and a bringer of trouble on those that I love best." "As for example?" I asked. "Well, it is Peggy!" he broke out. "You know, I like her best of them all, next to Ada; can't help it. She is nearer to me, somehow.
However, women don't see these faults in the men whom Love throws in their way. Shirker, who has about as much warmth as an eel, made up to Polly years and years ago, and was no bad match for a briefless barrister, as he was then. Have you ever read Lord Eldon's Life? Do you remember how the sordid old Snob narrates his going out to purchase twopence-worth of sprats, which he and Mrs.
But for the majority we common soldiers were merely beasts of burden, dogs to drive. This captain of whom I speak was a padded shape shirker from the front line a parader of his uniform before women. And he is that to-day a chaser of women girls girls of fifteen.... Yet he has the adulation of Middleville while Daren Lane is an outcast.... My God, is there no justice?
Whatever may be said henceforward of these "golden lads" of ours, "shirker" and "loafer" they can never he called again. They have died too lavishly, their men have loved and trusted them too well for that and some of the working-class leaders, with the natural generosity of English hearts, have confessed it abundantly.
Hicks gave her a black scowl. "I don't need no authority to whip a shirker," he said insolently, as he turned away. "Stop!" commanded Betty, her eyes blazing. She strove to keep her voice steady. "You shall not remain at Belle Plain another hour." Hicks said nothing. He knew it would take more than her saying so to get him off the place. Betty turned her horse and galloped back to the house.
Ruth Erskine could not get away from the feeling that she was a shirker; all the more so, because the person who had sat very near her was her father! not brought there by any invitation from her; it was not that she had tried and failed; that form of it would have been an infinite relief; she simply had not tried, and she made herself honestly confess to herself that the trouble was, she could not be satisfied with one who was within the reach of her asking.
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