“Sure, Sybyller, who’s that?  Is he yer sweetheart?  Sure he’s as fine a man as iver I clapped me eyes on.”

I proceeded to give his pedigree, but was interrupted by the arrival of the preacher, and we all went into the weatherboard iron-roofed house of prayer.

After service, one of the girls came up to me and whispered, ’11at is your sweetheart, isn’t it, Sybyller?  He was looking at you all the time in church.”

“Oh dear, no!  I’ll introduce him to you.”

I did so, and watched him as they made remarks about the heat and drought.  There was nothing of the cad or snob about him, and his short season of adversity had rubbed all the little crudities off his character, leaving him a man that the majority of both sexes would admire:  women for his bigness, his gentleness, his fine brown moustache—­and for his wealth; men, because he was a manly fellow.

I know he had walked to church on purpose to get a chance of speaking to me about Gertie, before approaching her parents on the matter; but Stanley accompanied us, and, boy-like, never relaxed in vigilance for an instant, so there was no opportunity for anything but matter-of-fact remarks.  The heat was intense.  We wiped the perspiration and flies from our face frequently, and disturbed millions of grasshoppers as we walked.  They had devoured all the fruit in the orchards about, and had even destroyed many of the trees by eating the bark, and now they were stripping the briers of foliage.  In one orchard we passed, the apricot, plum, and peach-stones hung naked on their leafless trees as evidence of their ravages.  It was too hot to indulge in any but the most desultory conversation.  We dawdled along.  A tiger-snake crossed our path.  Harold procured a stick and killed it, and Stanley hung it on the top wire of a fence which was near at hand.  After this we discussed snakes for a few yards.

A blue sea-breeze, redolent of the bush-fires which were raging at Tocumwal and Bombala, came rushing and roaring over the ranges from the cast, and enshrouded the scene in its heavy fog-like folds.  The sun was obscured, and the temperature suddenly took such a great drop that I felt chilled in my flimsy clothing, and I noticed Harold draw his coat together.

Stanley had to go after the cows, which were little better than walking hides, yet were yarded morning and evening to yield a dribble of milk.  He left us among some sallie-trees, in a secluded nook, walled in by briers, and went across the paddock to roundup the cows.  Harold and I came to a halt by tacit consent.

“Syb, I want to speak to you,” he said earnestly, and then came to a dead stop.

“Very well; ‘tear into it,’ as Horace would say; but if it is anything frightful, break it gently,” I said flippantly.

“Surely, Syb, you can guess what it is I have to say.”