there?"

"Well, I suppose so," said Jack. "We've all got our ghosts for
that matter. But never you mind, Harry; I'm all right. I don't go
interfering with your ghosts, and I don't see what call you've got to
come haunting mine. Why, it's as bad as kicking a man's dog." And
he gave the ghost of a grin.

"Tell me, Jack," I said, "is it a woman?"

"Yes," said Jack, "it's a woman. Now, are you satisfied?"

"Is it a girl?" I asked.

"Yes," he said.

So there was no more to be said. I'd thought it might have been a lot
worse than a girl. I'd thought he might have got married somewhere,
sometime, and made a mess of it.

We had dinner at Billy Woods's place, and a sensible Christmas dinner
it was--everything cold, except the vegetables, with the hose going on
the veranda in spite of the by-laws, and Billy's wife and her sister,
fresh and cool-looking and jolly, instead of being hot and brown and
cross like most Australian women who roast themselves over a blazing
fire in a hot kitchen on a broiling day, all the morning, to cook
scalding plum pudding and redhot roasts, for no other reason than that
their grandmothers used to cook hot Christmas dinners in England.

And in the afternoon we went for a row on the river, pulling easily up