e lots of women friends, she's practically alone if her
husband isn't with her. Tumble?"

Westonley nodded. "Go on, Tommy, go on to a dead finish. I am beginning
to see I'm in fault."

"Of course you are. And if you don't give her a long change in Sydney,
and stay there with her, you'll feel sorry for it; she'll become a
religious monomaniac, and go in for High Church, auricular confession,
and an empty stomach on Fridays. She's got a turn that way, remember.
A conventual education in a High Church school in England isn't a
very healthy preparation for a girl who afterwards marries a hulking,
horse-racing, hard-riding Australian squatter."

"What am I to do?" asked Westonley.

"Take her to Sydney next week. We'll all go together, little Mary
included, and I'll stay with you for a couple of months. I'll stand half
the racket."

"Shut up! Do you think I can't run Lizzie, little Mary, and myself
without you chipping in?"

"All right!" and Gerrard, secretly delighted, but showing no sign of
it, went on placidly: "you see, Ted, you have a good man in Black" (head
stockman at Marumbah). "What he doesn't know about cattle isn't worth
knowing, and there's no need for you to come tearing back for mustering,
and branding, and attending to things generally. D'ye think that if you
died to-morrow the cattle would go into mourning, and would refuse 'to
increase and multiply'? No one in this world is indispensable, although
everyone thinks he is, and that, when he pegs out, the Universe is going
to fall into serious trouble. Now, that's all I have to say. Are you
satisfied I'm talking sense?"

"Sonny, it's all right. I'll do any blessed thing you want, although
I hate the idea of leaving Marumbah to loaf about in Sydney for six
months," and the big man gripped Gerrard by his pointed beard, and
tugged it affectionately. "I can see that I have thought too much of
myself and too little of others."

"Not a bit; you were only thinking of Marumbah. Ted, old man, I think
I'll come back next year, and well see the Melbourne Cup together, hey?"

"Its a deal! If you don't come, I'll----"

"Kick me when I do come. Time we were off home, fatty."

Just about midnight, as Gerrard lay on his bed reading, he heard a low
sound of sobbing from little Mary's room, which adjourned his own. He
rose quietly, stepped to her door, and gently opened it.

The child was in her nightdress, leaning out of the window, with her
hands outstretched to