‘Dear me I’ cried Lucy; ’I am playing the hostess badly.  I have offered you nothing, and you must have had a long tramp.’

‘And I’ve forgotten poor Burton.’

’Go, bring him while I get tea.  I must know your mate.  Of course you drink tea?  Here everybody drinks tea at all hours.’

Jim found Mike admiring a wonderful big bay horse, the astounding virtues of which stimulated the black boy to an incoherent flow of yabber.

‘Don’t mind me,’ said Burton.  ‘I’ve had a drink an’ a sleep, and I’ve seen the loveliest animal that was ever lapped in horse-hide.  Look at him!’

’We were chatting away in there, and I forgot you, old man.  But come along; we are to have tea and grub on the veranda.’

‘Not me!’ Mike looked wildly for a way of escape.

‘Here, here! but you must, Mike—­I promised.’

’There’s a dirty trick to serve ‘a man!’ Burton was genuinely alarmed.  ‘Yarding him up with a mob of old women!  I’m hanged if I do it!’

’There’s no mob.  There’s only one, and she’s young and pleasant.  Come along, I’ll stand by you.’

‘Gi’ me your solemn oath you’ll break away as soon as possible.’

‘I do, I do.’

Mike was led on to the veranda and introduced to Lucy, who gave him a pleasant welcome.  He placed his hat by his chair, drank his tea quietly, said very little and ate less, flipped his fingers once or twice at the little girl in a friendly way, looked quite imperturbable, and all the time was painfully ill at ease, and raging inwardly at Jim’s delay.  When Lucy left them in quest of fruit, he turned furiously on his mate.

‘What’s that she says about staying?’

’She wants us to take a shakedown in one of the huts for to-night.  Mrs. Macdougal will be home before dark.  She wishes to see me.’

’By the big blue Bunyip, if you stay I’ll bush you in the next scrubby gully, an’ leave you to do a three days’ perish!’ Mike’s tribulation was pitiful, but Jim laughed derisively.

Done did not accept Lucy’s invitation, however.  To tell the truth, although it would have been a great pleasure to remain near the girl, he had no desire to meet Mrs. Macdougal.  He made suitable excuses.  Mike said it would require smart travelling to bring them to the camp where their tools and swags were left, and, having shaken hands with Lucy, sauntered away.

‘You will come again?’ said the girl to Jim.

’Yes, if I have the chance; but Burton is the Bush man.  I could never find you without his help.’

‘In any case you will write?’

‘I am bound to.’

They parted with a handshake, but fingers unclasped reluctantly and with a clinging appeal.