swags once for six months with a feller that was a Carflick, an' he
was a very straight feller. And a girl I knowed turned Carflick to
marry a chap that had got her into trouble, an' she was always jes'
the same to me after as she was before. Besides, I like to help
everything that's goin' on."

Tom Hall and one or two others went out hurriedly to have a drink.
But we all loved the Giraffe.

He was very innocent and very humorous, especially when he meant to be
most serious and philosophical.

"Some of them bush girls is regular tomboys," he said to me solemnly
one day. "Some of them is too cheeky altogether. I remember once I
was stoppin' at a place--they was sort of relations o' mine--an' they
put me to sleep in a room off the verander, where there was a glass
door an' no blinds. An' the first mornin' the girls--they was sort o'
cousins o' mine--they come gigglin' and foolin' round outside the door
on the verander, an' kep' me in bed till nearly ten o'clock. I had to
put me trowsis on under the bed-clothes in the end. But I got back on
'em the next night," he reflected.

"How did you do that, Bob?" I asked.

"Why, I went to bed in me trowsis!"


One day I was on a plank, painting the ceiling of the bar of the Great
Western Hotel. I was anxious to get the job finished. The work had
been kept back most of the day by chaps handing up long beers to me,