my chess, too. Still, one never knows what may happen,
and it is possible that some day you may see me up on the Batavia,
looking for a billet on some cattle station. I would go now if I
could. But I must stick to Mrs Tallis, at least until she gets another
manager."

"She won't let you leave Kaburie, Mr Knowles. She likes you too much;
she told me so." The little man's face suffused with pleasure. "It was
very good of her. But I should like her ever so much more if she would
give me a better salary."

"Ask her--she won't refuse you."

"Ah! I wouldn't have the courage; a lady, you see, is different from a
man."

"Write--that is easy enough. Now, promise me. And I can positively
assure you that she will only be too glad." She put her hand on his. "Do
promise me."

"I can refuse you nothing. But I need not write, for I think it very
likely that now the sale of Kaburie is 'off' with Mr Gerrard, she will
come back there to live. I had a telegram from her yesterday, in which
she said that she might come back next month."

"Then, Mr Knowles, you will have to propose to her--that will be ever so
much better than asking her for a bigger salary," and Kate laughed.

The ex-sailor blushed like a girl, then he tugged furiously at his
moustache. "By Jove, Miss Fraser, I--I--you don't know--I--if I were not
so old, and not so beastly poor--I was going to ask _you_ to marry me.
There, it's out now, and you'll think me an ass."

Kate's manner changed. What she had feared he would one day say, he had
now said, and she felt sorry for him.

"I think that you are such a man that any woman should be proud to hear
what you have said to me, Mr Knowles," she said softly. "I know more
about you than you think I do. But I shall never marry. I am going to
stick to my father, and grow up into a nice old maid with fluffy white
hair."

"You are not offended with me?"

"Offended! No, indeed. I feel proud that you should think so much of me
as to have thought of asking me to be your wife," and she put out her
hand to him. He raised it quickly to his lips, and then saying something
incoherent about his wanting to see Cockney Smith's kangaroo pups,
hurriedly left the room.

"That was over soon," breathed Kate, as she watched his well-set
little figure striding across the paddock to Smith's humpy. "He _is_ a
gentleman, if ever there was one in the world."

"What is the matter, little one?" asked her father, as he entered the
room.

"N