pply ran short.

Jim had visited the tent on one or two occasions, walking from the other
side of the gully; he went again on the Saturday afternoon following
their removal to buy bread. Mrs. Kyley's big camp-ovens were nestled in
the fires outside the tent, three of them in a row; Mrs. Kyley herself,
half smothered in suds, was washing with the rapidity and the
indefatigability of a machine.

'Aurora will attend to you, my boy,' blared Mrs. Kyley, blowing a storm
of suds out of her mop of hair.

Aurora! Jim entered the tent wondering, and found three or four men at
the counter, conversing with a young woman, twenty-three perhaps, tall,
black-haired, dark-eyed, flushed with colour, happy in temperament, free
in manner, a striking representative of a not uncommon type of the time,
meeting men on a mutual footing, asking no concessions and making
none--Jim's 'Spaniard' of the Melbourne dance saloon. She recognised him
immediately.

'Hello!' she cried. 'Look now! if it ain't the boy wid the blushes, an'
there's the blush to prove it agin' him.'

Jim was blushing; his rebellious blood gave the lie to his assumption of
easy indifference.

'How are you?' he said. 'I knew you at once.'

'To be sure. 'Twould be indacent to forgit, seem' it's my debtor ye are,
for the price of a dance.'

'Which you gave me for natural love and affection.'

''Deed, then 'twas because you were poor an' motherless in a strange
land, but now the gold's a worry to you, I doubt.'

Jim laughed and shook his head. 'I want a loaf,' he said. 'My mate is
hungry and waiting.'

'Heigho!' sighed Aurora; 'devil a scrap of gallantry have these slips of
boys, Quigley! You wouldn't leave me for all the mates on earth, would
you, now?'

The big bearded digger banged his fist on the counter, and swore a firm,
fluent oath that he would not.

'Worse luck,' added Aurora, with a twinkling eye. 'Here's yer bread,
Teddy-was-me-darlin', an' ye'd have it fer love if 'twas me own to give.'

Aurora assumed and dropped the musical brogue according to her whim.
Ordinarily her English was as pure as Mrs. Kyley's, and Mrs. Kyley had
the reputation of being a lady of vast attainments.

'There's the money,' said Jim, 'and will you take this for the dance?' He
offered her a nugget he had picked from the week's yield, a flat,
heart-shaped slug, curiously embossed.

''Deed, an' it's mighty fine,' said the girl, 'but I'd rather have ye me
debtor for life.'

'Tak