kept it close too, by all accounts). Young Black was away at the time,
and his mother was dead against him about Mary, but that didn't make
any difference, as far as I could see. I reckoned that it was only
just going to be a hopeless, heart-breaking, stand-far-off-and-worship
affair, as far as I was concerned--like my first love affair, that I
haven't told you about yet. I was tired of being pitied by good girls.
You see, I didn't know women then. If I had known, I think I might have
made more than one mess of my life.

Jack rode home to Solong every night. I was staying at a pub some
distance out of town, between Solong and Haviland. There were three or
four wet days, and we didn't get on with the work. I fought shy of Mary
till one day she was hanging out clothes and the line broke. It was the
old-style sixpenny clothes-line. The clothes were all down, but it was
clean grass, so it didn't matter much. I looked at Jack.

'Go and help her, you capital Idiot!' he said, and I made the plunge.

'Oh, thank you, Mr Wilson!' said Mary, when I came to help. She had the
broken end of the line and was trying to hold some of the clothes off
the ground, as if she could pull it an inch with the heavy wet sheets
and table-cloths and things on it, or as if it would do any good if she
did. But that's the way with women--especially little women--some of 'em
would try to pull a store bullock if they got the end of the rope on
the right side of the fence. I took the line from Mary, and accidentally
touched her soft, plump little hand as I did so: it sent a thrill right
through me. She seemed a lot cooler than I was.

Now, in cases like this, especially if you lose your head a bit, you get
hold of the loose end of the rope that's hanging from the post with one
hand, and the end of the line with the clothes on with the other, and
try to pull 'em far enough together to make a knot. And that's about
all you do for the present, except look like a fool. Then I took off
the post end, spliced the line, took it over the fork, and pulled, while
Mary helped me with the prop. I thought Jack might have come and taken
the prop from her, but he didn't; he just went on with his work as if
nothing was happening inside the horizon.

She'd got the line about two-thirds full of clothes, it was a bit short
now, so she had to jump and catch it with one hand and hold it down
while she pegged a sheet she'd thrown over. I'd made the plunge now,
so I volunt