“There’s a friend of mine,” she explained, making her way through the crowd to a brown-bearded man who was seated on the edge of an empty stall, apparently guarding a large empty basket in which were some white cloths.  The man’s features were fine and his forehead massive, his face indicating a frail constitution and strong intellectuality.  He wore an apron rolled up round his waist.  He seemed very poor.

“How d’ye do, Miss Lawton?” said he getting off the stall and shaking hands warmly.  “It’s quite an age since I saw you.  You’re looking as well as ever.”  Ned saw that his thin face beamed as he spoke and that his dark brown eyes, though somewhat hectic, wore singularly beautiful.

“I’m well, thanks,” said Nellie, beaming in return.  “And how are you?  You seem browner than you did.  What have you been doing to yourself?”

“Me!  I’ve been up the country a piece trying my hand at farming.  Jones is taking up a selection, you know, and I’ve been helping him a little now times aren’t very brisk.  I’m keeping fairly well, very fairly, I’m glad to say.”

“This is Mr. Hawkins, Mr. Sim,” introduced Nellie; the men shook hands.

“Come inside out of the rush,” invited Sim, making room for them in the entrance-way of the stall.  “We haven’t got any armchairs, but it’s not so bad up on the table here if you’re tired.”

“I’m not tired,” said Nellie, leaning against the doorway.  Ned sat up on the stall by her side; his feet were sore, unused to the hard paved city streets.

“I suppose Mr. Hawkins is one of us,” said Sim, perching himself up again.

“I don’t know what you call ‘one of us,’” answered Nellie, with a smile.  “He’s a beginner.  Some day he may get as far as you and Jones and the rest of the dynamiters.”

Sim laughed genially.  “Do you know, I really believe that Jones would use dynamite if he got an opportunity,” he commented.  “I’m not joking.  I’m positively convinced of it.”

“Has he got it as bad as that?” asked Nellie.  Ned began to feel interested.  He also noticed that Sim used book-words.

“Has he got it as bad as that!  ‘Bad’ isn’t any name for it.  He’s the stubbornest man I over met, and he’s full of the most furious hatred against the capitalists.  He has it as a personal feeling.  Then the life he’s got is sufficient to drive a man mad.”

“Selecting is pretty hard,” agreed Nellie, sadly.

“Nellie and I know a little about that, Mr. Sim,” said Ned.

“Well, Jones’ selection is a hard one,” went on Sim, goodhumouredly.  “I prefer to sell trotters, when I sell out like this, to attempting it.  The soil is all stones, and there is not a drop of water when the least drought comes on.  Poor Jones toils like a team of horses and hardly gets sufficient to keep him alive.  I never saw a man work as he does.  For a man who thinks and has ideas to be buried like that in the bush is terrible.  He has no one to converse with.  He goes mooning about sometimes and muttering to himself enough to frighten one into a fit.”