OVER THE SLIPRAILS
By Henry Lawson
Author of “While the Billy Boils”, “When the World was Wide and Other Verses”, “On the Track”, “Verses: Popular and Humorous”, &c.
[Note on text: Italicized words or phrases are capitalised.
Some obvious errors have been corrected.]
Preface
Of the stories in this volume many have already appeared in the columns of [various periodicals], while several now appear in print for the first time.
H. L. Sydney, June 9th, 1900.
OVER THE SLIPRAILS
The Shanty-Keeper's Wife
There were about a dozen of us jammed into the coach, on the box seat and hanging on to the roof and tailboard as best we could. We were shearers, bagmen, agents, a squatter, a cockatoo, the usual joker—and one or two professional spielers, perhaps. We were tired and stiff and nearly frozen—too cold to talk and too irritable to risk the inevitable argument which an interchange of ideas would have led up to. We had been looking forward for hours, it seemed, to the pub where we were to change horses. For the last hour or two all that our united efforts had been able to get out of the driver was a grunt to the effect that it was “'bout a couple o' mi