Young Black was away at the time, and his mother was dead against him
about Mary, but that didn't make any difference, as far as I could see.
I reckoned that it was only just going to be a hopeless, heart-breaking,
stand-far-off-and-worship affair, as far as I was concerned --
like my first love affair, that I haven't told you about yet.
I was tired of being pitied by good girls. You see, I didn't know women then.
If I had known, I think I might have made more than one mess of my life.

Jack rode home to Solong every night. I was staying at a pub
some distance out of town, between Solong and Haviland.
There were three or four wet days, and we didn't get on with the work.
I fought shy of Mary till one day she was hanging out clothes
and the line broke. It was the old-style sixpenny clothes-line.
The clothes were all down, but it was clean grass, so it didn't matter much.
I looked at Jack.

`Go and help her, you capital Idiot!' he said, and I made the plunge.

`Oh, thank you, Mr Wilson!' said Mary, when I came to help.
She had the broken end of the line and was trying to hold
some of the clothes off the ground, as if she could pull it an inch
with the heavy wet sheets and table-cloths and things on it,
or as if it would do any good if she did. But that's the way with women
-- especially little women -- some of 'em would try to pull a store bullock
if they got the end of the rope on the right side of the fence.
I took the line from Mary, and accidentally touched her soft,
plump little hand as I did so: it sent a thrill right through me.
She seemed a lot cooler than I was.

Now, in cases like this, especially if you lose your head a bit,