Children of the Bush | Page 7

the fence and put her arm round her shoulder.
The woman suddenly turned her back on us and stood looking away
over the paddocks.
The hat went round. Billy Woods was first, then Box-o'-Tricks, and
then Mitchell.
Billy contributed with eloquent silence. "I was only jokin', Giraffe,"
said Box-o'-Tricks, dredging his pockets for a couple of shillings. It
was some time after the shearing, and most of the chaps were hard up.
"Ah, well," sighed Mitchell. "There's no help for it. If the Giraffe would
take up a collection to import some decent girls to this God-forgotten
hole there might be some sense in it. . . . It's bad enough for the Giraffe
to undermine our religious prejudices, and tempt us to take a morbid
interest in sick Chows and Afghans, and blacklegs and widows; but
when he starts mixing us up with strange women it's time to buck."
And he prospected his pockets and contributed two shillings, some odd
pennies, and a pinch of tobacco dust.
"I don't mind helping the girls, but I'm damned if I'll give a penny to
help the old---," said Tom Hall.
"Well, she was a girl once herself," drawled the Giraffe.
The Giraffe went round to the other pubs and to the union offices, and
when he returned he seemed satisfied with the plate, but troubled about
something else.
"I don't know what to do for them for to-night," he said. "None of the
pubs or boardin'-houses will hear of them, an' there ain't no empty
houses, an' the women is all agen 'em."
"Not all," said Alice, the big, handsome barmaid from Sydney. "Come
here, Bob." She gave the Giraffe half a sovereign and a look for which
some of us would have paid him ten pounds--had we had the money,

and had the look been transferable.
"Wait a minute, Bob," she said, and she went in to speak to the
landlord.
"There's an empty bedroom at the end of the store in the yard," she said
when she came back. "They can camp there for to-night if they behave
themselves. You'd better tell 'em, Bob."
"Thank yer, Alice," said the Giraffe.
Next day, after work, the Giraffe and I drifted together and down by the
river in the cool of the evening, and sat on the edge of the steep,
drought-parched bank.
"I heard you saw your lady friends off this morning, Bob," I said, and
was sorry I said it, even before he answered.
"Oh, they ain't no friends of mine," he said. "Only four' poor devils of
women. I thought they mightn't like to stand waitin' with the crowd on
the platform, so I jest offered to get their tickets an' told 'em to wait
round at the back of the station till the bell rung. . . . An' what do yer
think they did, Harry?" he went on, with an exasperatingly unintelligent
grin. "Why, they wanted to kiss me."
"Did they?"
"Yes. An' they would have done it, too, if I hadn't been so long. . . .
Why, I'm blessed if they didn't kiss me hands."
"You don't say so."
"God's truth. Somehow I didn't like to go on the platform with them
after that; besides, they was cryin', and I can't stand women cryin'. But
some of the chaps put them into an empty carriage." He thought a
moment. Then:
"There's some terrible good-hearted fellers in the world," he reflected.
I thought so too. "Bob," I said, "you're a single man. Why don't you get
married and settle down?"
"Well," he said, "I ain't got no wife an' kids, that's a fact. But it ain't my
fault."
He may have been right about the wife. But I thought of the look that
Alice had given him, and---
"Girls seem to like me right enough," he said, "but it don't go no further
than that. The trouble is that I'm so long, and I always seem to get
shook after little girls. At least there was one little girl in Bendigo that I
was properly gone on."

"And wouldn't she have you?"
"Well, it seems not."
"Did you ask her?"
"Oh, yes, I asked her right enough."
"Well, and what did she say?"
"She said it would be redicilus for her to be seen trottin' alongside of a
chimbley like me."
"Perhaps she didn't mean that. There are any amount of little women
who like tall men."
"I thought of that too--afterwards. P'r'aps she didn't mean it that way. I
s'pose the fact of the matter was that she didn't cotton on to me, and
wanted to let me down easy. She didn't want to hurt me feelin's, if yer
understand--she was a very good-hearted little girl. There's some
terrible tall fellers where I come from, and