’That’s mighty kind for a man who doesn’t waste much breath in compliments.’

This is magnificent!’ said Jim.  ’Why have you never thought of it before?’

’Hear him!  Little he knows I’m just here to convince him what a model wife I’d make.  Would you believe it, boys, all the time I’ve known the villain it never occurred to him to ask me?’

‘I’d ask yer quick enough, b’gosh!’ blurted Con.

Jim blushed.  ‘She wouldn’t have me,’ he cried in self-defence.

‘At laste ye might have given a poor girl the refusal.’

‘Take me, then,’ said Jim through the soapsuds.  He was washing over a bucket.

’I will not.  You know you’re safe, anyhow, when there’s not priest or parson to be got for love or money.  Come, hurry up, there’s enough for all, and my contribution is an armful of Mary Kyley’s hot scones.’

The butt of a tree lying a few yards from the fire served the diggers as table and on to this Jim lifted Aurora.

‘That’s your place,’ he said, ‘at the head of the board.’

‘No, no!’ cried the girl, slipping to the ground again.  ’I am mistress.  I mean to attend at table.’  She served the men with the manners of a kindly hostess.  ‘There’s milk for the tea!’ she cried.

’Milk!  I haven’t seen the colour of it in Australia.  Who work the miracle?’ said Jim.

’Mary sent to a station out there by the ranges.  She got a quart, and I cabbaged half for my tea-party.’

‘You’re an angel, Aurora!’

‘There!’ she laughed; ‘and the trouble I’ve taken to keep it dark.’

‘We’ll be the envy of the whole field,’ said Mike; and Con uttered a corroborative ‘My colonial oath!’ that was eloquent of a grateful heart.

Aurora poured out the tea and buttered the scones, and then, sitting on a gin-case with her plate in her lap, ate a good meal in cheeriest fellowship, adding to the felicity of the party with gay badinage and happy laughter.  Aurora’s laugh was a delightful thing to hear; it had never ceased to give Done a peculiar stir of joyance, whilst awakening something of surprise.  It was the laugh of a merry child; its mirth was strangely infectious, strangely suggestive of an unsullied soul.  Hearing it, Jim turned to her wonderingly, but he had long since acquitted her of the suspicion of dissimulation.  She was the least self-conscious creature living, the least calculating.  If she had really set herself the task of displaying to the best advantage the more gentle and womanly side of her nature, she would certainly not have succeeded as well as she did this evening, moved by one of the thousand vagrant impulses that lent such varying colour to her character.  Her humour was more subdued, her gaiety was restrained within the limits of an almost conventional decorum.  She helped the men with a graciousness that was wholly effeminate, and the diggers responded to its influence.

‘Blast me if it don’t make a cove feel religious!’ was Harry Peetree’s sober comment, after he had lit his pipe and settled his back comfortably against the log.