-- that is, what we called pleasure, not what somebody thinks
we ought to take pleasure in. Anyway, I turned on George rather rough,
and I says, `We're not good enough for the likes of you, Mr. Storefield.
It's very kind of you to think of us, but we'll take our own line
and you take yours.'

`I'm sorry for it, Dick, and more sorry that you take huff at an old friend.
All I want is to do you good, and act a friend's part. Good-bye --
some day you'll see it.'

`You're hard on George,' says Jim, `there's no pleasing you to-day;
one would think there were lots of chaps fighting how to give us a lift.
Good-bye, George, old man; I'm sorry we can't wire in with you;
we'd soon knock out those posts and rails on the ironbark range.'

`You'd better stop, Jim, and take a hand in the deal,' says I
(or, rather, the devil, for I believe he gets inside a chap at times),
`and then you and George can take a turn at local-preaching
when you're cut out. I'm off.' So without another word
I jumped on to my horse and went off down the hill, across the creek,
and over the boulders the other side, without much caring where I was going.
The fact was, I felt I had acted meanly in sneering at a man
who only said what he did for my good; and I wasn't at all sure
that I hadn't made a breach between Gracey and myself,
and, though I had such a temper when it was roused that all the world
wouldn't have stopped me, every time I thought of not seeing that girl again
made my heart ache as if it would burst.

I was nearly home before I heard the clatter of a horse's feet,
and Jim rode up alongside of me. He was just the same as ever,