The distances to be covered--that was what made the work stiff. And he
could not afford to neglect a single summons, no matter where it led
him. Still, he would not have grumbled, had only the money not been so
hard to get in. But the fifty thousand odd souls on Ballarat formed,
even yet, anything but a stable population: a patient you attended one
day might be gone the next, and gone where no bill could reach him. Or
he had been sold off at public auction; or his wooden shanty had gone up
in a flare--hardly a night passed without a fire somewhere. In these
and like accidents the unfortunate doctor might whistle for his fee. It
seldom happened nowadays that he was paid in cash. Money was growing as
scarce here as anywhere else. Sometimes, it was true, he might have
pocketed his fee on the spot, had he cared to ask for it. But the
presenting of his palm professionally was a gesture that was denied him.
And this stand-offishness drove from people's minds the thought that he
might be in actual need of money. Afterwards he sat at home and racked
his brains how to pay butcher and grocer. Others of the fraternity were
by no means so nice. He knew of some who would not stir a yard unless
their fee was planked down before them--old stagers these, who at one
time had been badly bitten and were now grown cynically distrustful. Or
tired. And indeed who could blame a man for hesitating of a pitch-dark
night in the winter rains, or on a blazing summer day, whether or no he
should set out on a twenty-mile ride for which he might never see the
ghost of a remuneration?
Reflecting thus, Mahony caught at a couple of hard, spicy, grey-green
leaves, to chew as he went: the gums, on which the old bark hung in
ribbons, were in flower by now, and bore feathery yellow blossoms side
by side with nutty capsules.
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