“She was in the hospital, dying, Mary was.  I’ve heard since how that awful life kills the tender-hearted ones soon and Mary wasn’t 21.  She was in a bleak, bare ward, with a screen round her, and near by you could hear other girls laughing and shouting.  You wouldn’t have known her.  Only her eyes were the same, such loving, tender eyes, when she opened them and saw me.  She looked up and saw me standing there by the bedside and before she could shrink away I put my arms round her neck and kissed her forehead, where I used to kiss her, because I was the tallest, just where the hair grew.  And I told her that she mustn’t mind me and that she was my dear, dear sister and that she should have let me known because it had taken me so long to find her.  And she didn’t say anything but clung tight to me as though she would never let me go and then all at once her arms dropped and when I lifted my head she had fainted and her eyelids were wet.

“She died three days after.  I made some excuse to get away and saw her every day.  She hardly spoke she was so weak but she liked to lie with my hand in hers and me fanning her.  She said that first day, when she came to, that she thought I would come.  But she wouldn’t have written or spoken a word, Mary wouldn’t.  She didn’t even ask after the folks at home or how I was getting on.  She said once she was so tired waiting and I knew she meant waiting to die.  She didn’t want to live.  The last day she lay with her eyes half-closed, looking at me, and all at once her lips moved.  I bent down to her and heard her murmur:  ’I did try, Nellie, I did try,’ and I saw she was crying.  I put my arms round her and kissed her on the forehead and told her that I knew she had, and then she smiled at me, such a sweet pitiful smile, and then she stopped breathing.  That was the only change.

“I couldn’t stay in Brisbane.  I was afraid every minute of meeting somebody who’d known Mary and who might ask me about her, or of father or uncle or somebody coming down.  I wrote home and said I’d found out that Mary had died in the hospital of fever and they never thought of wanting to know any more, they were so full of grief.  And then I got wondering how I should get away, somewhere, where nobody would be likely to come to ask me about her, and I couldn’t go because I had no money and I was just wishing one day that I could see you when who should I meet but that Long Jack.  He gave me your address and I wrote to ask you to lend me thirty shillings, the fare to Sydney, and you sent me five pounds, Ned.  That’s how I came here.  Mary wouldn’t have anybody know if she could help it and I couldn’t have stayed there to meet people who knew her and would have talked of her.”

CHAPTER V.

AS THE MOON WANED.

The shadows were beginning to throw again as Nellie finished telling her story.  The quarters had sounded as they walked backwards and forwards.  It was past one when they stopped again under the lamp-post at the corner.