added.

"How's that?"

"I can't get work. I wouldn't mind if I could get a job but it's pretty
hard when you can't."

"Can't you get work?"

"I haven't done a stroke for ten weeks."

"Well, are you hard up?" enquired Ned, to whose bush experience ten weeks
out-of-work meant nothing.

"Look here," returned the lad, touching the front of his white shirt and
the cuffs. Ned saw that what he had taken for white flannel in the dim
candle-light was white linen, guileless of starch, evidently washed in a
hand-basin at night and left to dry over a chair till morning. "A man's
pretty hard up--ain't he?--when he can't get his shirt laundried."

"That's bad," said Ned, sympathetically, determining to sympathise a
pound-note. Starched shirts did not count to him personally but he
understood that the town and the bush were very different.

"I've offered three times to-day to work for my board," said the lad, not
tremulously but in the matter-of-fact voice of one who had looked after
himself for years.

"Where was that?" asked Ned, wide-awake at last, alarmed for the bushmen
rapidly turning over in his mind the effect of strong young men being
ready to work for their board.

"One place was down near the foot of Market Street, a produce merchant.
He told me he couldn't, that it was as much as he could do to provide for
his own family. Another place was at a wood and coal yard and the boss
said I'd leave in a week at that price so it wasn't any good talking. The
other was a drayman who has a couple of drays and he said he'd never pay
under the going wage to anybody and gave me sixpence. He said it was all
he could afford because times were so bad."

"Are you stumped then?" asked Ned.

"I haven't a copper."

Just then the broken-down swell woke up from his doze and demanded his
flask. After some search it was found underneath him. Then, heedless of
his interruptions, Ned continued the conversation.

"Do they take you here on tick?" he enquired.

"Tick! There's no tick here. That old man downstairs is as hard as nails.
Why, if it hadn't been for this gentleman I'd have had to walk about all
night or sleep in the Domain."

"Fair dues, my boy, fair dues?" put in the broken-down swell, "Never
refer to private matters like that. You make me feel ashamed, my boy. I
should never have mentioned that little accommodation. You understand
me?"

"I understand you," replied the lad. "I understand you perfectly."

"That's all