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I didn’t hear Mary at first. I hoped Jack would come round and help me out of the fix, but he didn’t.

‘Mr–Mr Wilson!’ said Mary. She had a sweet voice.

I turned round.

‘I thought you and Mr Barnes might like a cup of tea.’

‘Oh, thank you!’ I said, and I made a dive for the window, as if hurry would help it. I trod on an old cask-hoop; it sprang up and dinted my shin and I stumbled–and that didn’t help matters much.

‘Oh! did you hurt yourself, Mr Wilson?’ cried Mary.

‘Hurt myself! Oh no, not at all, thank you,’ I blurted out. ‘It takes more than that to hurt me.’

I was about the reddest shy lanky fool of a Bushman that was ever taken at a disadvantage on foot, and when I took the tray my hands shook so that a lot of the tea was spilt into the saucers. I embarrassed her too, like the damned fool I was, till she must have been as red as I was, and it’s a wonder we didn’t spill the whole lot between us. I got away from the window in as much of a hurry as if Jack had cut his leg with a chisel and fainted, and I was running with whisky for him. I blundered round to where he was, feeling like a man feels when he’s just made an ass of himself in public. The memory of that sort of thing hurts you worse and makes you jerk your head more impatiently than the thought of a past crime would, I think.

I pulled myself together when I got to where Jack was.

‘Here, Jack!’ I said. ‘I’ve struck something all right; here’s some tea and brownie–we’ll hang out here all right.’

Jack took a cup of tea and a piece of cake and sat down to enjoy it, just as if he’d paid for it and ordered it to be sent out about that time.

He was silent for a while, with the sort of silence that always made me wild at him. Presently he said, as if he’d just thought of it–

‘That’s a very pretty little girl, ‘Possum, isn’t she, Joe? Do you notice how she dresses?–always fresh and trim. But she’s got on her best bib-and-tucker to-day, and a pinafore with frills to it. And it’s ironing-day, too. It can’t be on your account. If it was Saturday or Sunday afternoon, or some holiday, I could understand it. But perhaps one of her admirers is going to take her to the church bazaar in Solong to-night. That’s what it is.’

He gave me time to think over that.

‘But yet she seems interested in you, Joe,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t you offer to take her to the bazaar instead of letting another chap get in ahead of you? You miss all your chances, Joe.’

Then a thought struck me. I ought to have known Jack well enough to have thought of it before.

‘Look here, Jack,’ I said. ‘What have you been saying to that girl about me?’

‘Oh, not much,’ said Jack. ‘There isn’t much to say about you.’

‘What did you tell her?’

‘Oh, nothing in particular. She’d heard all about you before.’

‘She hadn’t heard much good, I suppose,’ I said.

‘Well, that’s true, as far as I could make out. But you’ve only got yourself to blame. I didn’t have the breeding and rearing of you. I smoothed over matters with her as much as I could.’

‘What did you tell her?’ I said. ‘That’s what I want to know.’

‘Well, to tell the truth, I didn’t tell her anything much. I only answered questions.’

‘And what questions did she ask?’

‘Well, in the first place, she asked if your name wasn’t Joe Wilson; and I said it was, as far as I knew. Then she said she heard that you wrote poetry, and I had to admit that that was true.’

‘Look here, Jack,’ I said, ‘I’ve two minds to punch your head.’