haps are always
careless over things. It's harder to get cured of anything when you're
done growing."

He was always hopeful and cheerful. "If the worst comes to the worst,"
he said, "there's things I can do where I come from. I might do a bit
o' wool-sorting, for instance. I'm a pretty fair expert. Or else when
they're weeding out I could help. I'd just have to sit down and they'd
bring the sheep to me, and I'd feel the wool and tell them what it
was--being blind improves the feeling, you know."

He had a packet of portraits, but he couldn't make them out very well
now. They were sort of blurred to him, but I described them and he told
me who they were. "That's a girl o' mine," he said, with reference
to one--a jolly, good-looking bush girl. "I got a letter from her
yesterday. I managed to scribble something, but I'll get you, if you
don't mind, to write something more I want to put in on another piece of
paper, and address an envelope for me."

Darkness fell quickly upon him now--or, rather, the "sort of white blur"
increased and closed in. But his hearing was better, he said, and he was
glad of that and still cheerful. I thought it natural that his hearing
should improve as he went blind.

One day he said that he did not think he would bother going to the
hospital any more. He reckoned he'd get back to where he was known. He'd
stayed down too long already, and the "stuff" wouldn't stand it. He was
expecting a letter that didn't come. I was away for a couple of days,
and when I came back he had been shifted out of the room and had a bed
in an angle of the landing on top of the staircase, with the people
brushing against him and stumbling over his things all day on their way
up and down. I felt indignant, thinking that--the house being full--the
boss had taken advantage of the bushman's helplessness and good nature
to put him there. But he said that he was quite comfortable. "I can get
a whiff of air here," he said.

Going in next day I thought for a moment that I had dropped suddenly
back into the past and into a bush dance, for there was a concertina
going upstairs. He was sitting on the bed, with his legs crossed, and
a new cheap concertina on his knee, and his eyes turned to the patch of
ceiling as if it were a piece of music and he could read it. "I'm trying
to knock a few tunes into my head," he said, with a brave smile, "in
case the worst comes to the worst." He tried to be cheerful, but seemed
worried and