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This cut was washed with fluid from a small bottle on the table, smartly stitched, and then, after the wound in front had been treated, the shoulder was firmly bandaged, and Ryder seemed satisfied. He was none too soon, for at that moment Mary Kyley darted in. 'Half a dozen troopers are coming along the hill, she said. 'Bluff them! said Ryder quickly.
'The customers at a decent family hotel would expect it, I think, Mary added soberly. 'Jonathan Prator married his wife a week 'r two back, an' he's skitin' about it, grumbled Ben. So Jim remained for the wedding of Mr. and Mrs. Ben Kyley, which was quite a public ceremony.
Pete Quigley had two or three hard-won battles to his credit, and it was thought there was no man on the field so hard to handle, with the exception of Ben Kyley, whose showing against a professional of Bendigo's calibre set him on a plane above the mere amateur. Pete confessed himself beaten without equivocation. 'I ain't got any patience with this blanky new fangled style o' fightin', he said.
Ben Kyley, laundress and baker. Mrs. Kyley was a big-limbed, fresh-coloured, dimpled woman, whose native canniness did not, militate in the least against an amazonian joviality that made her hail-fellow-well-met with half the diggers on the field.
Ben; and Kyley returned as silently to his seat, and sat smoking throughout the scene that followed, apparently quite listless. 'Am I selling sly grog, Mr. Sergeant? Then it's a miracle where it comes from. I haven't a drop in the place, or I'd stand you a nobbler gladly. It's my opinion there are worse-looking men than Sergeant Wallis in gaol.
Kyley was a powerful woman, and in her grasp, when she was really determined, Aurora was as a mere child. 'For God's sake, let me see him! said the young woman. 'You mustn't be a fool, Aurora, the washerwoman said firmly. 'I can't let you go blundering in on to a sick man and this one is a very sick man. 'He's dying!
Ben Kyley made bread because bread-baking at three shillings a loaf was an exceedingly profitable business. For the same reason she washed shirts at twelve shillings the half-dozen. But selling rum at a shilling a nobbler to 'flash' diggers who despised change was much more profitable still.
Kyley was bantering Wallis with boisterous good-fellowship. 'The idea of an officer of your penetration, sergeant, mistaking a poor washerwoman's tent for a grog-shop. The poor washerwoman does a big business, Mrs. Kyley. 'Not amongst the police, Sergeant Wallis. It is a miserable living a washerwoman would make out of them.
'Shut up, you! cried Kyley. 'The lad's fightin' his own battle, an' fightin' it well. He could wipe the floor with a bunch of you. Breathing heavily, and looking extremely ugly under his blood and bruises, Pete followed Jim round, watching for an opportunity to rush in and grip him.
Jim had visited the tent on one or two occasions, walking from the other side of the gully; he went again on the Saturday afternoon following their removal to buy bread. Mrs. Kyley's big camp-ovens were nestled in the fires outside the tent, three of them in a row; Mrs. Kyley herself, half smothered in suds, was washing with the rapidity and the indefatigability of a machine.
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