Explore "A Sydney-Side Saxon" by Rolf Boldrewood on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
OF course, we'd go and see the old people regular, Jane and I. Father used to keep much the same--he'd got not to bother himself much about anything but his vittles and an ounce of tobacco now and then. He'd left the world for good and all. There was no more to do in it for him. He was a sort of monk now without the things that monks have to keep themselves alive with. He used to ask us about the crops and the weather, and who was dead and married or buried, but didn't trouble himself much one way or the other. He had a kind of half notion that somehow or other his fifty odd years of hard work and good character oughtn't to have ended this way; but he couldn't account for it. His mind was that hazy and confused like he couldn't cipher it out nohow. He puzzled over it while he was smoking when I brought him some fresh tobacco.
'Jesse, lad,' he would say, 'I cannot unravel the weft o' it. I've made and helped make a sight of victual in my day, and now there's nought for me but a handful of oat-meal night and morning, with a bit of meat and soup like kennel stuff. Parson says there must be rich and poor all our days on earth. You and me's meant to be poor, and the Squire to be rich all along, seems like it.'