chuckle, “Never heard of one running Mrs. Bob down, though.  She always tripped ’em up before they could get to her.”  Then finding the missus had thrown away a “good cup of tea just because a few flies had got into it,” he became grave.  “Never heard of Mrs. Bob getting up to those tricks,” he said, and doubted whether “the missus’ld do after all,” until reassured by the Maluka that “she’ll be fishing them out with the indifference of a Stoic in a week or two”; and I was.

When within a few miles of the homestead, the buckboard took a sharp turn round a patch of scrub, and before any one realised what was happening we were in the midst of a mob of pack horses, and face to face with the Quiet Stockman a strong, erect, young Scot, who carried his six foot two of bone and muscle with the lithe ease of a bushman.

“Hallo” Mac shouted, pulling up.  Then, with the air of a showman introducing some rare exhibit, added:  “This is the missus, Jack.”

Jack touched his hat and moved uneasily in his saddle, answering Mac’s questions in monosyllables.  Then the Maluka came up, and Mac, taking pity on the embarrassed bushman, suggested “getting along,” and we left him sitting rigidly on his horse, trying to collect his scattered senses.

“That was unrehearsed,” Mac chuckled, as we drove on.  “He’s clearing out!  Reckon he didn’t set out exactly hoping to meet us, though.  Tam’s a lady’s man in comparison,” but loyal to his comrade above his amusement, he added warmly:  “You can’t beat Jack by much, though, when it comes to sticking to a pal,” unconscious that he was prophesying of the years to come, when the missus had become one of those pals.

“There’s only the Dandy left now,” Mac went on, as we spun along an ever more definite track, “and he’ll be all right as soon as he gets used to it.  Never knew such a chap for finding something decent in everybody he strikes.”  Naturally I hoped he would “find something decent in me,” having learned what it meant to the stockmen to have a woman pitchforked into their daily lives, when those lives were to be lived side by side, in camp, or in saddle, or at the homestead.

Mac hesitated a moment, and then out flashed one of his happy inspirations.  “Don’t you bother about the Dandy,” he said; “bushmen have a sixth sense, and know a pal when they see one.”

Just a bushman’s pretty speech, aimed straight at the heart of a woman, where all the pretty speeches of the bushfolk are aimed; for it is by the heart that they judge us.  “Only a pal,” they will say, towering strong and protecting; and the woman feels uplifted, even though in the same breath they have honestly agreed with her, after careful scrutiny, that it is not her fault that she was born into the plain sisterhood.  Bushmen will risk their lives for a woman pal or otherwise but leave her to pick up her own handkerchief.

“Of course!” Mac added, as an afterthought.  “It’s not often they find a pal in a woman”; and I add to-day that when they do, that woman is to be envied her friends.