I heard them come in to tea, and I thought Harold had gone till I heard uncle Jay-Jay address him: 

“Joe Archer told me you ran into a clothes-line on race-night, and ever since then mother has kept up a daddy of a fuss about ours.  We’ve got props about a hundred feet long, and if you weren’t in the know you’d think we had a telegraph wire to old St Peter up above.”

I wondered what Harold thought of the woman he had selected as his future wife being shut up for being a “naughty girl”.  The situation amused me exceedingly.

About nine o’clock he knocked at my window and said: 

“Never mind, Syb.  I tried to get you off, but it was no go.  Old people often have troublesome straitlaced ideas.  It will blow over by tomorrow.”

I did not answer; so he passed on with firm regular footfall, and presently I heard his horse’s hoof-beats dying away in the darkness, and the closing and locking of doors around me as the household retired for the night.

During the following fortnight I saw Harold a good many times at cricket-matches’ hare-drives, and so forth, but he did not take any particular notice of me.  I flirted and frolicked with my other young men friends, but he did not care.  I did not find him an ardent or a jealous lover.  He was so irritatingly cool and matter-of-fact that I wished for the three months to pass so that I might be done with him, as I had come to the conclusion that he was barren of emotion or passion of any kind.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

SWEET SEVENTEEN

Monday arrived—­last day of November and seventeenth anniversary of my birth—­and I celebrated it in a manner which I capitally enjoyed.

It was the time of the annual muster at Cummabella—­a cattle-station seventeen miles eastward from Caddagat—­and all our men were there assisting.  Word had been sent that a considerable number of beasts among those yarded bore the impress of the Bossier brand on their hides; so on Sunday afternoon uncle Jay-Jay had also proceeded thither to be in readiness for the final drafting early on Monday morning.  This left us manless, as Frank Hawden, being incapacitated with a dislocated wrist, was spending a few weeks in Gool-Gool until he should be fit for work again.

Uncle had not been gone an hour when a drover appeared to report that twenty thousand sheep would pass through on the morrow.  Grass was precious.  It would not do to let the sheep spread and dawdle at their drovers’ pleasure.  There was not a man on the place; grannie was in a great stew; so I volunteered my services.  At first she would not hear of such a thing, but eventually consented.  With many injunctions to conduct myself with proper stiffness, I started early on Monday morning.  I was clad in a cool blouse, a holland riding-skirt, and a big straw hat; was seated on a big bay horse, was accompanied by a wonderful sheep-dog, and carried a long heavy stock-whip.