I don't mind helping the girls, but I'm damned if I'll give a penny to
help the old ----," said Tom Hall.

"Well, she was a girl once herself," drawled the Giraffe.

The Giraffe went round to the other pubs and to the union offices, and
when he returned he seemed satisfied with the plate, but troubled about
something else.

"I don't know what to do for them for to-night," he said. "None of the
pubs or boardin'-houses will hear of them, an' there ain't no empty
houses, an' the women is all agen 'em."

"Not all," said Alice, the big, handsome barmaid from Sydney. "Come
here, Bob." She gave the Giraffe half a sovereign and a look for which
some of us would have paid him ten pounds--had we had the money, and had
the look been transferable.

"Wait a minute, Bob," she said, and she went in to speak to the
landlord.

"There's an empty bedroom at the end of the store in the yard," she said
when she came back. "They can camp there for to-night if they behave
themselves. You'd better tell 'em, Bob."

"Thank yer, Alice," said the Giraffe.

Next day, after work, the Giraffe and I drifted together and down by
the river in the cool of the evening, and sat on the edge of the steep,
drought-parched bank.

"I heard you saw your lady friends off this morning, Bob," I said, and
was sorry I said it, even before he answered.

"Oh, they ain't no friends of mine," he said. "Only four' poor devils of
women. I thought they mightn't like to stand waitin' with the crowd on
the platform, so I jest offered to get their tickets an' told 'em to
wait round at the back of the station till the bell rung.... An' what
do yer think they did, Harry?" he went on, with an exasperatingly
unintelligent grin. "Why, they wanted to kiss me."

"Did they?"

"Yes. An' they would have done it, too, if I hadn't been so long....
Why, I'm blessed if they didn't kiss me hands."

"You don't say so."

"God's truth. Somehow I didn't like to go on the platform with them
after that; besides, they was cryin', and I can't stand women cryin'.
But some of the chaps put them into an empty carriage." He thought a
moment. Then:

"There's some terrible good-hearted fellers in the world," he reflected.

I thought so too. "Bob," I said, "you're a single man. Why don't you get
married and settle down?"

"Well," he said, "I ain't got no wife an' kids, that's a fact. But it
ain't my fault."

He may have been right about the wife. But I thought of the look that
Alic