Free Best Australian Short Stories by Douglas Stewart, Beatrice Davis

heard.
    My bill was twenty-five shillings.

Frank Penn-Smith

PIETY’S MONUMENT
     
    THE old man gathered in his contemplation from elsewhere, and fixed his pink-edged eyes on mine. I coughed and then began: “Didn’t old Piety work the kilns above here? What sort of lime did he burn?” And I offered the old fellow my flask.
    He picked up a battered jam-tin and gazed thoughtfully into it. Then he poked his finger in. Lastly, he emptied all my whisky into it, and drank it swiftly and suspiciously. “Eh?” he said. Then something began to work in the old man; his reserve seemed to crack and come to pieces; he burst-up slowly, as it were, and crumbled into speech. “What should you know about old Piety?” he asked, uneasily, in a sorrowful, whining tone. “Oh, he could burn lime,” he went on, “leastways, he thought he could. But there was as much difference between his kilns and mine as between oysters and cheese. Well! Well! You knowed him?” he whispered, stroking the bricks in the chimney behind him, thoughtfully.
    “No” I replied, “only heard of him.”
    “And heard wrong,” said the old man simply. “Now I’ll tell you the facks.” Then he went off in a low, quavering whine: “Piety owned these here kilns, an’ Piety burnt lime. Leastways, he said he did, but it was me as done it But when Piety put his finger in, the kiln was all stone. He worrited here, he worrited there, muddling and mulling every blessed kiln till he had me nigh crazed, and my fingers raw picking out stone. Jus’ give me the contrack,’ I’d say—‘the contrack to burn lime at so much a bushel.’ ‘No you don’t,’ says he. An’ that’s all I ever got out of him: ‘No, you don’t! Not in my day.’ And then he went and killed the kangaroo.” “The kangaroo?” I asked. “What kangaroo?”
    “Bill’s kangaroo,” he replied, querulously. “Bill had a pet kangaroo—Bill, the old man’s grandson, as owns these here kilns now. They didn’t get on, the old man and Bill, and lived in different huts. Bill was an orphan. Well, the kiln was about half-full and burning—old Piety, he was great at half-kilns—when the kangaroo hopped on to the kiln bank and ate old Piety’s dinner, bread-and-butter and what not. Oho! he was wild when he found out. Then the beast came and rooted at him with its fore-paws, playing like. With that, he kicks it; but for’, the beast thought he was playing with it, so it just turns back upon him, a-twiddling its paws. Then he goes for it real spiteful, and give it a tremendous kick that sends it flying, right into the burning kiln.”
    The old man paused here and stared into space, mumbling. Then he went on, monotonously: “Lad! You would have larfed to see that kangaroo jump. But, lor’! there’s no jumping out of a kiln. D’ye see the p’int?—But Bill he didn’t larf when he finds it all out. There was the last of the kangaroo smoking in the blue flame a-top of the kiln. ‘Oh, you old devil!’ he says to Piety; ‘it would serve you right to go through the kiln yourself!’ Then he cleared right away, and wouldn’t speak to nobody. But it was the childer as did it.” “Did what?” I asked.
    “Well, it was like this,” he explained. “My fingers was red raw with the half-burnt stone, and I was a-tying them up with rags, and abusing of old Piety. ‘Couldn’t burn charcoal, let alone lime!’ I says. And the childer they took it round to Piety hisself. Well! the kiln was emptied, and we was going to start another, when he comes toddling down. ‘You old weather-beaten windbag, you!’ he cries. ‘It’s you that knows what spoils the kilns!’ he says; ‘just you clear out. I’ll put, the lime in myself this time.’ ‘And welcome,’ says I, ‘if you draw it yourself,’ says I.
    “‘None of your cheek!’ he says, coming at me with the sieve, and so I clears away, larfing to myself at the mess he’d make of it, and waiting for his tantrum to blow over. Well,