Old Drumble Read Free Page B

down his knife and fork and nodded the top of his head to the right and his chin to the left, and the left corner of his mouth screwed up and a click came out of it. A good one. “I don’t think I used my tongue at all,” he said. “Besides, there wasn’t any mashed potato to get in the way.”
    Jack tried to copy him. They tried nodding this way, and they tried nodding that way; and they both had trouble remembering to wink their eyes and make the clicks because they were thinking about it. Jack’s dad was better at it, but even he got mixed up sometimes, and Jack didn’t seem able to get the wink right at all.Not if he clicked. And he couldn’t get the click going if he winked.
    They were clicking and winking and nodding when Jack’s mum turned from the stove.
    “I thought so!” she said. “Pulling faces and winking at each other behind my back. That’s all the gratitude I get for spending the afternoon bent over a hot stove getting tea ready for the pair of you. All you can think to do is to make a mockery of me!” She slammed her plate down on the table, slumped into her chair, threw her apron over her head, and burst into tears.
    “Mum!” Jack shouted as he leapt up. “We weren’t making a mockery out of you! Honest!” But he sat down again when he saw his mother grinning under her apron. She was having him on.
    “Now get on with your tea, and we’ll have no more of this clicking and winking and nodding. As for you, you’d think a grown man would know better than to go teaching the boy a lot of silly nonsense when he should be eating his tea.” Without stopping for breath, his mother said, “Next time Andy the Drover comes through, why don’t you ask him to teach you how to nod and wink and click the corner of your mouth? He’s better at such things than your father. He’s been doing it twice as long.
    “Now, hurry up and finish your greens, I’ve got a nice golden syrup pudding for you. And after that I’ll make your father a cup of tea and you can give me a hand toget the dishes done, and then it’ll be time for you to get to bed. I wonder when Andy will be along? He promised to drop in a cutting off Mrs Charlie Ryan’s camellia, her white one.”
    “If Andy comes,” Jack said, “can I help him drive the sheep?”
    “Drive the sheep?”
    “Oh!” Jack whined with his voice going up. He thought of finishing with a click, but stopped just in time.
    “What will the boy be asking next?”
    “Just down the other end of Ward Street?”
    “We’ll see,” said Jack’s mother. “Mind you, I’m not promising anything.”

Chapter Seven
    Why Jack Watched to See Andy
Take Off His Hat, Just As Far As the
Bottom of the Street and Not a Step Further,
and What Reminded Jack of the
Governor-General’s Plumed Hat.
    A NDY THE DROVER turned up on Tuesday morning, his mob of sheep left over the other side of the hall corner, where there was never any traffic and they had a bit of grass.
    “Where’s Old Drumble?” asked Jack.
    “Holding them.” Andy nodded back past the hall, and Jack saw Old Drumble standing, daring the sheep to move a foot nearer the corner. “Old Nell and Young Nugget, they’re back the other end of the mob,” said Andy.
    He was taking his reins, passing the bight through the fence wires, up and over the top of a post. Nosy, his old horse, was smart at opening gates. She’d never worked out how to get her reins off the fence yet, but set about it now, as Andy reached inside the split sack—what he called a pikau—over Nosy’s back, behind the saddle.
    “What would Nosy do if she got her reins undone?” Jack asked.
    “Mooch along the fence and munch the heads off your mother’s flowers. She wouldn’t like that—I mean your mother—I’d never hear the end of it. Or she might wander back and have a word with Old Drumble. She wouldn’t go far,” said Andy. “Those two stick together. They like each other’s company.” He pulled out a carefully packed