s Grimshaw,
widower--otherwise known as 'Old Jimmy', though he was little past
middle age--had a small selection which he had worked, let, given up,
and tackled afresh (with sinews of war drawn from fencing contracts)
ever since the death of his young wife some fifteen years agone. He was
a practical, square-faced, clean-shaven, clean, and tidy man, with a
certain 'cleanness' about the shape of his limbs which suggested the
old jockey or hostler. There were two strong theories in connection with
Jimmy--one was that he had had a university education, and the other
that he couldn't write his own name. Not nearly such a ridiculous nor
simple case Out-Back as it might seem.

Jimmy smoked and listened without comment to the 'heard tells' in
connection with Mrs Myers, till at last one night, at the end of his
contract and over a last pipe, he said quietly, 'I'll go up to Tinned
Dog next week and try my luck.'

His mates and the casual Jims and Bills were taken too suddenly to
laugh, and the laugh having been lost, as Bland Holt, the Australian
actor would put it in a professional sense, the audience had time to
think, with the result that the joker swung his hand down through an
imaginary table and exclaimed--

'By God! Jimmy'll do it.' (Applause.)

*****

So one drowsy afternoon at the time of the year when the breathless day
runs on past 7 P.M., Mrs Myers sat sewing in the bar parlour, when a
clean-shaved, clean-shirted, clean-neckerchiefed, clean-moleskinned,
greased-bluchered--altogether a model or stage swagman came up, was
served in the bar by the half-caste female cook, and took his way to the
river-bank, where he rigged a small tent and made a model camp.

A couple of hours later he sat on a stool on the verandah, smoking a
clean clay pipe. Just before the sunset meal Mrs Myers asked, 'Is that
trav'ler there yet, Mary?'

'Yes, missus. Clean pfellar that.'

The landlady knitted her forehead over her sewing, as women do when
limited for 'stuff' or wondering whether a section has been cut
wrong--or perhaps she thought of that other who hadn't been a 'clean
pfellar'. She put her work aside, and stood in the doorway, looking out
across the clearing.

'Good-day, mister,' she said, seeming to become aware of him for the
first time.

'Good-day, missus!'

'Hot!'

'Hot!'

Pause.

'Trav'lin'?'

'No, not particular!'

She waited for him to explain. Myers was always explaining when he
wasn't raving. B