since then. A girl's first sorrow
when something happened to her love! They never look quite the same
afterwards. I've seen a good many, and if it was real right down love,
they were never the same in looks or feelings afterwards. They might
'get over it', as people call it; but that's a sort of healing over a
wound. It don't always cure it, and the wound often breaks out again and
bleeds afresh.

Jeanie didn't look so bad, and she was that glad to see Jim again and
to find him respected as a hard-working well-to-do miner that she forgot
most of her disappointments and forgave him his share of any deceit that
had been practised upon her and her sister. Women are like that. They'll
always make excuses for men they're fond of and blame anybody else that
can be blamed or that's within reach. She thought Starlight and me had
the most to do with it--perhaps we had; but Jim could have cut loose
from us any time before the Momberah cattle racket much easier than he
could now. I heard her say once that she thought other people were much
more to blame than poor James--people who ought to have known better,
and so on. By the time she had got to the end of her little explanation
Jim was completely whitewashed of course. It had always happened to him,
and I suppose always would. He was a man born to be helped and looked
out for by every one he came near.

Seeing how good-looking Jeanie was thought, and how all the swells
kept crowding round to get a look at her, if she was near the bar, Kate
wanted to have a ball and show her off a bit. But she wouldn't have it.
She right down refused and close upon quarrelled with Kate about it. She
didn't take to the glare and noise and excitement of Turon at all. She
was frightened at the strange-looking men that filled the streets by day
and the hall at the Prospectors' by night. The women she couldn't abide.
Anyhow she wouldn't have nothing to say to them. All she wanted--and she
kept at Jim day after day till she made him carry it out--was for him to
build or buy a cottage, she didn't care how small, where they could
go and live quietly together. She would cook his meals and mend his
clothes, and they would come into town on Saturday nights only and be
as happy as kings and queens. She didn't come up to dance or flirt, she
said, in a place like Turon, and if Jim didn't get a home for her she'd
go back to her dressmaking at St. Kilda. This woke up Jim, so he bought
out a miner who lived a bi