hing,' I said. 'You have no right
to say that he's robbing, or something of that sort, because he doesn't
care about tying himself to mother's apron-string.'

Aileen laughed, but it was more like crying.

'You told me just now,' she said--oh! so sorrowfully--'that you and Jim
were old enough to take a line of your own. Why don't you do it now?'

'And tell father we'll have nothing more to do with him!'

'Why not?' she said, standing up straight before me, and facing me just
as I saw father face the big bullock-driver before he knocked him down.
'Why not? You need never ask him for another meal; you can earn an easy
living in half-a-dozen ways, you and Jim. Why should you let him spoil
your life and ruin your soul for evermore?'

'The priest put that into your head,' I said sneeringly; 'Father
Doyle--of course he knows what they'll do with a fellow after he's
dead.'

'No!' she said, 'Father Doyle never said a word about you that wasn't
good and kind. He says mother's a good Catholic, and he takes an
interest in you boys and me because of her.'

'He can persuade you women to do anything,' I said, not that I had any
grudge against poor old Father Doyle, who used to come riding up the
rough mountain track on his white horse, and tiring his old bones,
just 'to look after his flock,' as he said--and nice lambs some of them
were--but I wanted to tease her and make her break off with this fancy
of hers.

'He never does, and couldn't persuade me, except for my good,' said she,
getting more and more roused, and her black eyes glowed again, 'and I'll
tell you what I'll do to prove it. It's a sin, but if it is I'll stand
by it, and now I'll swear it (here she knelt down), as Almighty God
shall help me at the last day, if you and Jim will promise me to start
straight off up the country and take bush-work till shearing comes on,
and never to have any truck with cross chaps and their ways, I'll turn
Protestant. I'll go to church with you, and keep to it till I die.'

Wasn't she a trump? I've known women that would give up a lot for a man
they were sweet on, and wives that would follow their husbands about
like spaniels, and women that would lie and deceive and all but rob and
murder for men they were fond of, and sometimes do nearly as much to
spite other women. But I don't think I ever knew a woman that would
give up her religion for any one before, and it's not as if she
wasn't staunch to her own faith. She was as regular