Page:The romance of Runnibede (IA romanceofrunnibe00rudd).pdf/68

FOLLOWING upon Combo and Curricomb’s adventure with Old Harry and the load of wood, other aboriginals grew bolder and began to come round the homestead. Shy as a lot of kids they were, and for some time suspicious of everyone and of everything that was done. The Governor wasn’t long, though, in making friends with those children of Cain and wanderers of the bush. He gave them supplies of food and all the discarded clothes on the station, and now and again a blanket or two. But I remember he often regretted ever having introduced clothing amongst them at all. They were a hardier and healthier people, he reckoned, without them. The clothes were not sufficient to cover their skins comfortably, and made them sensitive and susceptible to cold and heat, and vain as white people. They brought colds and coughs amongst some of them, changed their natures, and in time impaired their constitutions by taking the toughness out of them and weakening their powers of resistance.

It was wonderful how quickly the Governor acquired a knowledge of their language, and in a short while used to "yabber" for hours with Combo and Curricomb and "Captain," interrogating them on all sorts of things, sawing the air with his hands, and slapping himself on the thighs, and grunting and barking, in suiting the action to the word, and the word to the action. It wasn’t long before those blackfellows fairly worshipped the Governor, and as