regular old image, Jim,' says she. 'I hope none of my other
friends 'll get married if it knocks all the go out of them, same as
it has from you. However, you can stand up for a friend, can't you? You
wouldn't see me trod upon; d'ye think you would, now? I'd stand up for
you, I know, if you was bested anywhere.'

'My dear Maddie,' says Starlight, 'James is in that particular stage of
infatuation when a man only sees one woman in the whole world. I envy
him, I assure you. When your day comes you will understand much of what
puzzles you at present.'

'I suppose so,' said Maddie, going back to her seat with a wondering,
queer kind of look. 'But it must be dreadful dull being shut in for
weeks and weeks in one place, perhaps, and with only one man.'

'I have heard it asserted,' he says, 'that a slight flavour of monotony
occasionally assails the honeymoon. Variety is the salt of life, I begin
to think. Some of these fine days, Maddie, we'll both get married and
compare notes.'

'You'll have to look out, then,' says Bella. 'All the girls about here
are getting snapped up quick. There's such a lot of young bankers,
Government officers, and swells of all sorts about the diggings now, not
to reckon the golden-hole men, that we girls have double the pull we
had before the gold. Why, there was my old schoolmate, Clara Mason,
was married last week to such a fine young chap, a surveyor. She'd only
known him six weeks.'

'Well, I'll come and dance at your wedding if you'll send me an invite,'
says Starlight.

'Will you, though?' she said. 'Wouldn't it be fun? Unless Sir Ferdinand
was there. He's a great friend of mine, you know.'

'I'll come if his Satanic Majesty himself was present (he occasionally
does attend a wedding, I've heard), and bring you a present, too, Bella;
mind, it's a bargain.'

'There's my hand on it,' says she. 'I wonder how you'll manage it, but
I'll leave that to you. It mightn't be so long either. And now it's time
for us all to go to bed. Jim's asleep, I believe, this half hour.'

Chapter 37

This bit of a barney, of course, made bad blood betwixt us and Moran's
mob, so for a spell Starlight and father thought it handier for us to
go our own road and let them go theirs. We never could agree with chaps
like them, and that was the long and short of it. They were a deal too
rough and ready for Starlight; and as for Jim and me, though we were
none too good, we couldn't do some of the things t