There was another pause.

“If you won’t for the sake of your wife and your children and yourself and everybody, will you do it to please me?” asked Nellie, who knew that Mr. Hobbs regarded her as the one perfect woman in Australia and, woman-like, was prepared to take advantage thereof.

“You know, Miss Lawton, I’m not one of the fellows who swear off Monday mornings and get on the spree the next Saturday night.  If I say I’ll turn temperance I’ll turn.”  So quoth the sturdy Hobbs.

“I know that.  If you were the other sort do you think I’d be bothering you?” retorted Nellie.

“Well, I’ll do it,” said Mr. Hobbs.  “So help me——­”

“Never mind that,” interrupted the girl.  “If a man’s a man his word’s his word, and if he’s not all the swearing in the world won’t make any difference.  Let’s shake on it!” She held out her hand.

Mr. Hobbs dropped the door-knob and covered her long, slender hand with his great, broad, horny-palmed one.

“Good night, Mr. Hobbs!” she said, the “shake” being over.  “Get her to sleep and don’t let her fret!”

“Good night, Miss Nellie!” he answered, using her name for the first time.  He wanted to say something more but his voice got choked up and he shut the door in her face, so confused was he.

“Hello, Nellie!” said a voice that made her heart stand still, as she crossed the road, walking sadly homewards.  At the same time two hands stretched out of the dense shadow into the lane of moonlight that shone down an alley way she was passing and that cut a dazzling swath in the blackness made still blacker by the surrounding brilliancy.  “I’ve been wondering if you ever would finish that pitch of yours.”

It was Ned.

CHAPTER II.

ON THE ROAD TO QUEENSLAND.

While Nellie had been talking temperance to Mr. Hobbs, Ned had been watching her impatiently from the other side of the street.  For an hour and more he had been prowling up and down, up and down, between the Phillipses and the Hobbses, having learned from Mrs. Phillips, who looked wearier than ever, where the Hobbses lived now and why Nellie had gone there after hardly stopping to swallow her dinner.  At seven he had acquired this information and returned soon after nine to find Nellie still at the house of sickness, now, alas, the house of death.  So he had paced up and down, up and down, waiting for her.  He had seen the Hobbs’ door open at last and had watched impatiently, from the shadow opposite, the conversation on the door step.  His heart gave a great leap as she stopped across the road full in the moonlight.  He saw again the sad stern face that had lived as an ideal in his memory for two long eventful years.  There was none like her in the whole world to him, not one.