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Jack Drew camped in a skillion room behind his printing office, and had his meals at the Royal. I noticed the storm had taken a sheet of iron off the skillion, and supposed he'd sleep at the Royal that night. Next was the Imperial Hotel, where the scrub aristocrats went. There was a vacant allotment on the other side of the Bank, and I took a short cut across this to the Royal.
Next day I found one of the skillion rooms scrubbed out and a bed fixed up for me. I'm not sure to this day who did it, but I supposed that good-natured old Black had given one of the women a hint. After tea I had a yarn with Mary, sitting on a log of the wood-heap. I don't remember exactly how we both came to be there, or who sat down first. There was about two feet between us.
She went to her bedroom a small, low, slab skillion, built on to the end of the house and fell on her knees by the bunk. "God help me! God help us all!" she cried. She lay down, but could not sleep. She was nervously ill nearly mad, because of the dark, disgraceful cloud of trouble which hung over her home. Always in trouble always in trouble.
I knew he'd keep promising and humbugging me till there was a row, so at last I got him aside and said: "Look here, Jack, I'm going for Peter M'Laughlan " "Go to hell!" said Jack. I put the other horses back in the yard, the saddles in the skillion, got on my horse and rode off. Thomas and the others asked me no questions, they took no notice.
He steadied up when he got married and started on a small selection of his own; but within the year Clara was living in a back skillion of her father's house and Jack was up-country shearing.
There was no dairy to be seen, and I suppose the milk was set in one of the two skillion rooms, or lean-to's behind the hut, the other was 'the boys' bedroom'. The Spicers kept a few cows and steers, and had thirty or forty sheep. Mrs Spicer used to drive down the creek once a-week, in her rickety old spring-cart, to Cobborah, with butter and eggs.
She sat as she did when he found her in the skillion after her father had been taken, with intent eyes bent upon the floor. When called upon to give her evidence she gave it clearly and fully, in a firm distinct voice, like a person without interest or feeling.
He lived where he happened to be in a town hotel, in the best room of a homestead, in the skillion of a sly-grog shanty, in a shearer's, digger's, shepherd's, or boundary-rider's hut; in a surveyor's camp or a black-fellows' camp or, when the horrors were on him, by a log in the lonely Bush. It seemed all one to him.
I left my wet umbrella on the veranda, and aunt Helen led me into the dining-room, where a spruce maid was making a pleasant clatter in laying the table. Caddagat was a very old style of house, and all the front rooms opened onto the veranda without any such preliminary as a hall, therefore it was necessary to pass through the dining-room to my bedroom, which was a skillion at the back.
If it was in Australia, probably Lord Douglas was an elder son and had to do all the hard graft, and teach himself at night, and sleep in a bark skillion while his younger brothers benefited they were born in the new brick house and went to boarding-schools.
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