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“Mean and deceitful! What do you mean by that? Whatever are you talking about? I suppose I’ve got as good a right to meet him as anyone else.”

“No, you haven’t,” retorted Mary, “you’re only stringing him on. You only did it to spite me. You helped him to deceive me. You ought to be ashamed to look me in the face.”

“Good gracious! Whatever are you talking about? Ain’t I good enough for him! I ought to be, God knows! I suppose he can marry who he likes, and if I’m poor fool enough to love him and marry him, what then? Mary, you ought to be the last to speak–speak to–to me like that.”

“Yes. He can marry all, the girls in the country for all I care. I never want to see either him or you any more. You’re a cruel, deceitful, brazen-faced hussy, and he’s a heartless, deceiving blackguard.”

“Mary! I believe you’re mad,” said Bertha, firmly. “How dare you speak to me like that! And as for him being a blackguard. Why, you ought to be the last in the world to say such a thing; you ought to be the last to say a word against him. Why, I don’t believe you ever cared a rap for him in spite of all your pretence. He could go to the devil for all you cared.”

“That’s enough, Bertha Buckolt!” cried Mary. “You–you! Why, you’re a barefaced girl, that’s what you are! I don’t want to see your brazen face again.” With that she turned and stumbled blindly in the direction of home.

“Send back my cape,” cried Bertha as she too turned away.

Mary walked wildly home and fled to her room and locked the door. Bertha did likewise.

Mary let Aunt Emma in after a while, ceased sobbing and allowed herself to be comforted a little. Next morning she was out milking at the usual time, but there were dark hollows under her eyes, and her little face was white and set. After breakfast she rolled the cape up very tight in a brown-paper parcel, addressed it severely to

MISS BERTHA BUCKOLT,

Eurunderee Creek,

and sent it home by one of the school-children. She wrote to Harry Dale and told him that she knew all about it (not stating what), but she forgave him and hoped he’d be happy. She never wanted to see his face again, and enclosed his portrait.

Harry, who was as true and straight as a bushman could be, puzzled it out and decided that some one of his old love affairs must have come to Mary’s ears, and wrote demanding an explanation.

She never answered that letter.

ACT III

It was Christmas Day at Rocky Rises. The plum puddings had been made, as usual, weeks beforehand, and hung in rags to the tie-beams and taken down and boiled again. Poultry had been killed and plucked and cooked, and all the toil had been gone through, and every preparation made for a red-hot dinner on a blazing hot day–and for no other reason than that our great-grandmothers used to do it in a cold climate at Christmas-times that came in mid-winter. Merry men hadn’t gone forth to the wood to gather in the mistletoe (if they ever did in England, in the olden days, instead of sending shivering, wretched vassals in rags to do it); but Uncle Abel had gone gloomily up the ridge on Christmas Eve, with an axe on his shoulder (and Tommy unwillingly in tow, scowling and making faces behind his back), and had cut young pines and dragged them home and lashed them firmly to the veranda-posts, which was the custom out there.

There was little goodwill or peace between the three or four farms round Rocky Rises that Christmas Day, and Uncle Abel had been the cause of most of the ill-feeling, though they didn’t know, and he was least aware of it of any.