)
He got a long, hairy leg over and felt (instinctively) for the hub of
the wheel; his foot found and rested on the projecting ledge of the
balcony floor outside, and that, to him, was the hub all right. He
swung his other leg over and expected to drop lightly on to the grass
or dust of the camp; but, being instinctively rigid, he fell heavily
some fifteen feet into a kerbed gutter.
As a result of his howls lights soon flickered in windows and
fanlights; and with prompt, eager, anxious, and awed bush first-aid
and assistance, they carried a very sober, battered and blasphemous
driver inside and spread mattresses on the floor. And, some six weeks
afterwards, an image, mostly of plaster-of-Paris and bandages,
reclined, much against its will, on a be-cushioned cane lounge on the
hospital veranda; and, from the only free and workable corner of its
mouth, when the pipe was removed, came shockingly expressed opinions
of them ---- newfangled ---- two-story ----! "night houses" (as it
called them). And, thereafter, when he had a load on, or the weather
was too bad for sleeping in or under his wagon, the veranda of a
one-storied shanty (if he could get to it) was good enough for
MacSomething, the carrier.
THE HYPNOTIZED TOWNSHIP
They said that Harry Chatswood, the mail contractor would do anything
for Cobb & Co., even to stretching fencing-wire across the road in a
likely place: but I don't believe that--Harry was too good-hearted to
risk injuring innocent passengers, and he had a fellow feeling for
drivers, being an old coach driver on rough out-back tracks himself.
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