"Ain't Seen Cabbage, Ma'am, For More'n Five Years," He Said, Leaning Back
On To A Fallen Tree Trunk, With A Satisfied Sigh (Cabbage And Tea Being
Inflating), Adding When I Sympathised, "Nor A Woman Neither, For That
Matter."
Neither a cabbage nor a woman for five years!
Think of it, townsfolk!
Neither a cabbage nor a woman - with the cabbage placed first. I wonder
which will be longest remembered.
"Came on this, though, in me last camp, east there," he went on,
producing a hairpin, with another nod eastwards. "Wondered how it got
there." "Your'n, I s'pose"; then, sheepish once more, he returned it to
his pocket, saying he "s'posed he might as well keep it for luck."
It being a new experience to one of the plain sisterhood to feel a man
was cherishing one of her hairpins, if only "for luck," I warmed towards
the "man from Beyanst," and grew hopeful of rivalling even that cabbage
in his memory. "You didn't expect to find hairpins, and a woman, in a
camp in the back blocks," I said, feeling he was a character, and longing
for him to open up. But he was even more of a character than I guessed.
"Back blocks!" he said in scorn. "There ain't no back blocks left.
Can't travel a hundred miles nowadays without running into somebody! You
don't know what back blocks is, begging your pardon, ma'am."
But Dan did; and the camp chat that night was worth travelling several
hundred miles to hear:
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