were in keeping with his costume, which
was decidedly unclerical. For he only wore his clerical "rig" when
visiting towns sufficiently populous for him to hold services therein.
At the present time he was clad in the usual Crimean shirt, white
moleskins, and brown leather leggings, and the grey slouched felt hat
affected by most bushmen. His valise, however, contained all that was
necessary--even to the wreck of a clerical hat--to turn himself into the
orthodox travelling clergyman of the Australian bush.

"Ah! I was only joking, Mr Forde, as you know. _You_ are not the usual
kind of 'parson.' That is why father--and everyone else--likes you.
Then, too, you can ride--I mean sit a horse as an Australian does; and
you smoke a pipe, and--oh, I wonder, Mr Forde, that you never married!
Now I am sure that Mrs Tallis admires you--In fact she told me so, and
Kaburie is a lovely station, and----"

The clergyman laughed again. "Thank you, Miss Fraser. I'm afraid I
should not have courage enough to propose to a brand-new widow even if I
was sure she would say 'yes.'" Then he added quietly, "There is only one
woman in the world for me; and I have not even dared let her know I care
for her. I want her to get to know me a little better. And then a bush
parson is not a very eligible _parti?_

"Oh! I don't see why not, though I don't think _I_ should like to marry
a clergyman."

"Why?" He asked the question with such sudden earnestness that she
looked up.

"Oh! one would have to visit such a lot of disagreeable women, and be
at least civil to them. Take old Mrs Piper for instance. She gave
fifty pounds towards the little church built at Boorala, and made your
predecessor's life miserable for the two years he was in the district.
She told him that she strongly disapproved of single clergymen 'under
any circumstances,' and tried to make the unfortunate man propose to
Miss Guggin, who is forty if she's a day, and poor Mr Simpson was only
twenty-five."

"No wonder he fled the country."

"No wonder, indeed! Then there are the Treverton family at Boorala; very
rich and highly respectable, though old Treverton was a notorious cattle
duffer{*} in Victoria. Father says that Mr Treverton would have made the
patriarch Jacob die with envy. He started from Gippsland with a team of
working bullocks, six horses, and twenty-four cows and calves to take up
new country on the Campaspe River, and, in six months' journey overland,
his herd of ca