whether you are rich
or poor--only for your own sake? If you really want me, I will marry you
when I am twenty-one if you are as poor as a crow."

"It is too good to be true. I thought you didn't care for me. Sybylla,
what do you mean?"

"Just what I say," I replied, and without further explanation, jumping
off the fence I ran back as fast as I had come.

When half-way home I stopped, turned, looked, and saw Harold cantering
smartly homewards, and heard him whistling a merry tune as he went.

After all, men are very weak and simple in some ways.

I laughed long and sardonically, apostrophizing myself thus:

"Sybylla Penelope Melvyn, your conceit is marvellous and unparalleled! So
you actually imagined that you were of sufficient importance to assist a
man through life--a strong, healthy young man too, standing six feet three
and a half in his socks, a level-headed business man, a man of high
connections, spotless character, and influential friends, an experienced
bushman, a man of sense, and, above all, a man--a man I The world was
made for men.

"Ha ha! You, Sybylla, thought this! You, a chit in your teens, an ugly,
poor, useless, unimportant, little handful of human flesh, and, above, or
rather below, all, a woman--only a woman! It would indeed be a depraved
and forsaken man who would need your services as a stay and support! Ha
ha! The conceit of you!"

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Because?

The Beechams were vacating Five-Bob almost immediately--before Christmas.
Grannie, aunt Helen, and uncle Jay-Jay went down to say good-bye to the
ladies, who were very heartbroken about being uprooted from Five-Bob, but
they approved of their nephew settling things at once and starting on a
clean sheet. They intended taking up their residence--hiding themselves,
they termed it--in Melbourne. Harold would be detained in Sydney some time
during the settling of his affairs, after which he intended to take
anything that turned up. He had been offered the management of Five-Bob
by those in authority, but could not bring himself to accept managership
where he had been master. His great desire, now that Five-Bob was no
longer his, was to get as far away from old associations as possible.

He had seen his aunts off, superintended the muster of all stock on the
place, dismissed all the female and most of the male employees, and
surrendered the reins of government, and as Harold Augustus Beecham, boss
of Five-Bob, on Mond