Tom Gerrard. Becke Louis

pretty blouse of yours, although you pretend to be so cold, and put on the ‘keep-off-the-style’—even to me.”

      “I’m not cold-hearted, Thomas.”

      Gerrard rose from his scat, and in another moment, Mrs Westonley found herself in his arms, and seated upon his knees.

      “Now, look here Lizzie,” and he kissed her, “I’m going to do my level best to please you, for you are my sister. I daresay I have done many things to displease you, but I love you, old woman, I do indeed. And whatever I may have said in the past I ‘take back’ as we bushmen say, and I want you to give me some of your affection. I know you have tons of it concealed under that prim little manner of yours, but you are too proud to show it. And see, Lizzie, old girl, I’m not really the reckless scallawag you think me to be,” and he stroked her hair, and looked so earnestly and pleadingly into her eyes, that her woman’s heart triumphed, and she leant her head on his shoulder.

      “I never thought you cared for me, Tom,” she said “and I daresay that I have been to blame in many respects. Edward is one of the best husbands in the world, but he is careless and all but irreligious, and I cannot—I really cannot change my nature and be anything more than politely civil to the friends he sometimes brings here—they are rough, noisy and bucolic. I am always urging him to leave a manager at Marumbah and retire from squatting altogether. I do not like Australia, and wish to live in England, but he will not hear of it, although we have ample means to enable us to live in comfort, if not luxury.”

      Gerrard smiled as he gazed around the handsomely furnished room, and, mentally compared it with his own rough dining room on his station in the Far North.

      “I should call this a pretty luxurious diggings, Lizzie,” he said; “there are not many such houses as Marumbah Head Station in Australia.”

      His half-sister shrugged her shoulders. “You should see some of the country houses in England, Thomas. And then another reason why I dislike bush life is the utter lack of female society.”

      Gerrard raised his brows. “Why, there are the three Gordon girls at Black River station, only ten miles away; they certainly struck me as being graceful, refined girls.”

      “Mrs Gordon is not a lady, and makes no secret of it. Her father was a fishcurer at Inverness, and before that a herring fisher.”

      “But she speaks, acts, and bears herself like a lady,” protested Gerrard.

      “It doesn’t matter—she is not one. How Major Gordon, who comes from an old Scottish family, could marry her, I cannot understand. She was a nursery governess, or something like that.”

      “Yet Gordon seems a very happy man, and the girls–”

      “The girls are all very well, although too horsey for me. I cannot tolerate young women bounding about all over the country after kangaroos, in company with a lot of rough men in shirts and moleskins, attending race meetings, and calling the Roman Catholic clergyman ‘Father Jim’ to his face. It’s simply horrible.”

      “Well! what about Mrs Brooke and Ethel Brooke?” asked Gerrard; “surely they are ladies in every sense of the word?”

      “I admit that they are better than the Gordons, but Ethel Brooke is a notorious jilt, and her mother has absolutely no control of her; then Mr Brooke himself is more like one of his own stockmen in appearance than a gentleman by birth and education.”

      Gerrard looked up at the ceiling—then gave up any further argument in despair. “I’ll tell you what you want, Lizzie,” he said, cheerfully, “you want about six months in Melbourne or Sydney.”

      “I detest Melbourne; it is hot, dusty, dirty, noisy, and vulgar.”

      “Then Sydney?”

      “Of course, I like Sydney; but Edward never will stay there more than a week—he is always dying to be back among his cattle and horses.”

      “I’ll try my hand with him, and see what I can do with the man,” then he added,

      “Now, let us get on with breakfast. Then we’ll see this cubby house, and I’ll diagnose the bear’s complaint.”

      As soon as breakfast was over, Mrs Westonley left the room to put on her hat, and Gerrard stretched himself out in a squatter’s chair on the verandah to smoke his pipe. Presently he heard his sister calling, “Jim, where are you? I want you.”

      “Yes, Mrs Westonley!” came the reply in a boyish treble, and the owner of it wondered what made her voice sound so differently from its usual hard, sharp tone.

      “Jim, come here and see my brother. He, you, and Mary, and I are all going down to the cubby house.”

      Suppressing a gasp of astonishment, the boy came to her to where Gerrard and she were now sitting.

      “Thomas, this is Jim.”

      Gerrard jumped up and held out his hand.

      “How are you, Jim? Glad to see you,” and he smiled into the boy’s sunburnt face. “By Jove! you are a big chap for a ten year old boy. What are you going to be—soldier, sailor, tinker, tailor, eh?”

      “I did want to be a sailor, sir; but now I’m going to be a stockman.”

      Gerrard smiled again, and surveyed the boy closely. He was rather tall for his age, but not weedy, with a broad sturdy chest, and his face was almost as deeply bronzed as that of Gerrard himself, and two big, honest brown eyes met his gaze steadily and respectfully; the squatter took a liking to him at once, as he had to his sister’s child.

      “Well, Jim, I’m going to stay here a week, and you’ll have to tote me around, and keep me amused—see? You and Mary between you.”

      “Yes, sir.”

      “Any fish in Marumbah River?”

      “Lots and lots—two kinds of bream, Murray cod, jew fish, and speckled trout, and awful big eels.”

      “Ha! that’s good enough. Got fishing lines and hooks?”

      “Yes, sir.”

      “Then bring ‘em along. Where is Mary, Lizzie?”

      “Here she is,” and Mrs Westonley brought her forward, the child’s eyes dancing with pleasure; “she was too excited to eat any breakfast, until I insisted. Thomas, they’ll worry you to death. You don’t know them.”

      Gerrard threw his feet up in the air, like a boy, and rapped his heels together—“I’m fit for anything—from fishing to riding bull calves, or cutting out a wild bees’ nest from a gum tree a mile high. Oh! we’re going to have a high old time. I say, Mary, where’s the invalid Bunny?”

      “In the saddle-room.”

      “Then come along, and I’ll prescribe for the poor, tailless gentleman,” and he jumped to his feet. “We shall not be long, Lizzie—are you ready?”

      “I shall be in ten minutes, Thomas,” and the children looked wonderingly at her, for she actually smiled at them.

      CHAPTER IV

      A few days after the return of the owner of Marumbah Downs, he, with Gerrard and the black stockman, Toby, were camped on the bank of a creek about thirty miles from the head station. They had started out at daylight to muster some of the outlying cattle camps, and now after a hard day’s riding were stretching themselves out upon the grassy bank to rest, whilst Toby was lighting the fire in readiness for supper. On the top of the bank the three hardy stockhorses and a packmare, were grazing contentedly on the rich green grass, and lying at Westonley’s feet were two beautiful black-and-tan cattle dogs, still panting with their exertions. The camp had been made in a grove of mimosa trees, within a hundred yards of the clear waters of the creek, which rippled musically over its rocky bed as it sped swiftly to the sea. It wanted an hour to sunset, and already the hum of insects was in the air, and a faint cool breeze which had been stirring the green graceful fronds of the mimosas, and wafting fleecy strips of white across the blue dome above, had died away.

      In the thick foliage of a