Next day was Sunday—­a blazing one it was too.  I proposed that in the afternoon some of us should go to church.  Father sat upon the idea as a mad one.  Walk two miles in such heat for nothing! as walk we would he compelled to do, horseflesh being too precious in such a drought to fritter it away in idle jaunts.  Surprising to say, however, Harold, who never walked anywhere when he could get any sort of a horse, uttered a wish to go.  Accordingly, when the midday dinner was over, he, Stanley, and I set out.  Going to church was quite the event of the week to the residents around Possum Gully.  It was a small Dissenting chapel, where a layman ungrammatically held forth at 3 P.m. every Sunday; but the congregation was composed of all denominations, who attended more for the sitting about on logs outside, and yarning about the price of butter, the continuance of the drought, and the latest gossip, before and after the service, than for the service itself.

I knew the appearance of Harold Beecham, would make quite a miniature sensation, and form food for no end of conjecture and chatter.  In any company he was a distinguished-looking man, and particularly so among these hard-worked farmer-selectors, on whose careworn features the cruel effects of the drought were leaving additional lines of worry.  I felt proud of my quondam sweetheart.  There was an unconscious air of physical lordliness about him, and he looked such a swell—­not the black-clothed, clean-shaved, great display of white collar-and-cuffs swell appertaining to the office and city street, but of the easy sunburnt squatter type of swelldom, redolent of the sun, the saddle, the wide open country—­a man who is a man, utterly free from the least suspicion of effeminacy, and capable of earning his bread by the sweat of his brow—­with an arm ready and willing to save in an accident.

All eyes were turned on us as we approached, and I knew that the attentions he paid me out of simple courtesy—­tying my shoe, carrying my book, holding my parasol—­would be put down as those of a lover.

I introduced him to a group of men who were sitting on a log, under the shade of a stringybark, and leaving him to converse with them, made my way to where the women sat beneath a gum-tree.  The children made a third group at some distance.  We always divided ourselves thus.  A young fellow had to be very far gone ere he was willing to run the gauntlet of all the chaff levelled at him had he the courage to single out a girl and talk to her.

I greeted all the girls and women, beginning at the great-grandmother of the community, who illustrated to perfection the grim sarcasm of the fifth commandment.  She had worked hard from morning till night, until too old to do so longer, and now hung around with aching weariness waiting for the grave.  She generally poured into my cars a wail about her “rheumatisms”, and “How long it do be waiting for the Lord”; but today she was too curious about Harold to think of herself.