into the bad ways he's been following these years.'

`How do you know it's so bad?' said I. `How can a girl like you know?'

`I know very well,' she said. `Do you think I've lived here all these years
and don't know things? What makes him always come home after dark,
and be that nervous every time he sees a stranger coming up
you'd think he was come out of gaol? Why has he always got money,
and why does mother look so miserable when he's at home,
and cheer up when he goes away?'

`He may get jobs of droving or something,' I said. `You have no right
to say that he's robbing, or something of that sort, because he doesn't care
about tying himself to mother's apron-string.'

Aileen laughed, but it was more like crying.

`You told me just now,' she said -- oh! so sorrowfully --
`that you and Jim were old enough to take a line of your own.
Why don't you do it now?'

`And tell father we'll have nothing more to do with him!'

`Why not?' she said, standing up straight before me, and facing me
just as I saw father face the big bullock-driver before he knocked him down.
`Why not? You need never ask him for another meal; you can earn
an easy living in half-a-dozen ways, you and Jim. Why should you let him
spoil your life and ruin your soul for evermore?'

`The priest put that into your head,' I said sneeringly;