It was nearly midnight,and,with a shiver,she pulled the shawl over her shoulders and took a last look at the street before she went to bed.
Thirty years ago since she came to live in it,when half the street was an open paddock!If Jim could see it now he wouldn't know it!The thought brought the vision of him before her eyes.She was an old woman now,but in her mind's eye he remained for ever young and for ever joyous,the smart workman in a grey cap,with the brown moustache and laughing eyes,who was nobody's enemy but his own.Something within her had snapped when he died,and she had remained on the defensive against life,expecting nothing,surprised at nothing,content to sit out the performance like a spectator at the play.
She thought of to-morrow,and decided to pay a surprise visit to the Silver Shoe before the people set out for church.There was something wrong with Ada,she felt sure.Jonah had failed to look her in the eye when she had asked news of Ada the last time.Well,she would go and see for herself,and talk Ada into her senses again.She locked the door and went to bed.
She gave Jonah and Ada a surprise,but not in the way she intended.
On Sunday morning it happened that Mrs Swadling sent over for a pinch of tea,and,growing impatient,ran across to see what was keeping Tommy.
She found that he could make no one hear,and growing suspicious,called the neighbours.An hour later the police forced the door,and found Mrs Yabsley dead in bed.The doctor said that she had died in her sleep from heart failure.Mrs Swadling,wondering what had become of Miss Perkins,found a note lying on the floor,and wondered no more when she read:
DEAR MRS YABSLEY,I am sorry that I can't stay for the outing to-morrow,but my cousin came out of Darlinghurst jail this morning,and we are going to the West to make a fresh start.All I told you about my beautiful home was quite true,only I was the upper housemaid.I am taking a few odds and ends that you bought for the winter,as I could never find out where you hid your money.I have searched till my back ached,and quite agree with you that it is safer than a bank.I left your clothes at Aaron's pawnshop,and will post you the ticket.When you get this I shall be safe on the steamer,which is timed to leave at ten o'clock.I hope someone will read this to you,and tell you that I admire you immensely,although Itake a strange way of showing it.
In haste,MAY
THE TWO-UP SCHOOL
The silence of sleeping things hung over the Haymarket,and the three long,dingy arcades lay huddled and lifeless in the night,black and threatening against a cloudy sky.Presently,among the odd nocturnal sounds of a great city,the vague yelping of a dog,the scream of a locomotive,the furtive step of a prowler,the shrill cry of a feathered watchman from the roost,the ear caught a continuous rumble in the distance that changed as it grew nearer into the bumping and jolting of a heavy cart.
It was the first of a lumbering procession that had been travelling all night from the outlying suburbs--Botany,Fairfield,Willoughby,Smithfield,St Peters,Woollahra and Double Bay--carrying the patient harvest of Chinese gardens laid out with the rigid lines of a chessboard.A sleepy Chinaman,perched on a heap of cabbages,pulled the horse to a standstill,and one by one the carts backed against the kerbstone forming a line the length of the arcades,waiting patiently for the markets to open.And still,muffled in the distance,or growing sharp and clear,the continuous rumble broke the silence,the one persistent sound in the brooding night.
Presently the iron gates creaked on rusty hinges,the long,silent arcades were flooded with the glow from clusters of electric bulbs,and,with the shuffle of feet on the stone flags,the huge market woke slowly to life,like a man who stretches himself and yawns.Outside,the carters encouraged the horses with short,guttural cries,the heavy vehicles bumped on the uneven flags,the horses'feet clattered loudly on the stones as the drivers backed the carts against the stalls,and the unloading began.
In half an hour the grimy stalls had disappeared under piles of green vegetables,built up in orderly masses by the Chinese dealers.The rank smell of cabbages filled the air,the attendants gossiped in a strange tongue,and the arcades formed three green lanes,piled with the fruits of the earth.Here and there the long green avenues were broken with splashes of colour where piles of carrots,radishes and rhubarb,the purple bulbs of beetroot,the creamy white of cauliflowers,and the soft green of eschalots and lettuce broke the dominant green of the cabbage.
The markets were transformed;it was an invasion from the East.Instead of the sharp,broken cries of the dealers on Saturday night,the shuffle of innumerable feet,the murmur of innumerable voices in a familiar tongue,there was a silence broken only by strange guttural sounds dropping into a sing-song cadence,the language of the East.Chinamen stood on guard at every stall,slant-eyed and yellow,clothed in the cheap slops of Sydney,their impassive features carved in fantastic ugliness,surveying the scene with inscrutable eyes that had opened first on rice-fields,sampans,junks,pagodas,and the barbaric trappings of the silken East.
At four o'clock the sales began,and the early buyers arrived with the morose air of men who have been robbed of their sleep.There were small dealers,Dagoes from the fruit shops,greengrocers from the suburbs,with a chaff-bag slung across their arm,who buy by the dozen.They moved silently from stall to stall,pricing the vegetables,feeling the market,calculating what they would gain by waiting till the prices dropped,making the round of the markets before they filled the chaff-bags and disappeared into the darkness doubled beneath their loads.
