e had given him, and--

"Girls seem to like me right enough," he said, "but it don't go no
further than that. The trouble is that I'm so long, and I always seem
to get shook after little girls. At least there was one little girl in
Bendigo that I was properly gone on."

"And wouldn't she have you?"

"Well, it seems not."

"Did you ask her?"

"Oh, yes, I asked her right enough."

"Well, and what did she say?"

"She said it would be redicilus for her to be seen trottin' alongside of
a chimbley like me."

"Perhaps she didn't mean that. There are any amount of little women who
like tall men."

"I thought of that too--afterwards. P'r'aps she didn't mean it that way.
I s'pose the fact of the matter was that she didn't cotton on to me, and
wanted to let me down easy. She didn't want to hurt me feelin's, if
yer understand--she was a very good-hearted little girl. There's some
terrible tall fellers where I come from, and I know two as married
little girls."

He seemed a hopeless case.

"Sometimes," he said, "sometimes I wish that I wasn't so blessed long."

"There's that there deaf jackaroo," he reflected presently. "He's
something in the same fig about girls as I am. He's too deaf and I'm too
long."

"How do you make that out?" I asked. "He's got three girls, to my
knowledge, and, as for being deaf, why, he gasses more than any man in
the town, and knows more of what's going on than old Mother Brindle the
washerwoman."

"Well, look at that now!" said the Giraffe, slowly. "Who'd have thought
it? He never told me he had three girls, an' as for hearin' news, I
always tell him anything that's goin' on that I think he doesn't catch.
He told me his trouble was that whenever he went out with a girl people
could hear what they was sayin'--at least they could hear what she was
sayin' to him, an' draw their own conclusions, he said. He said he went
out one night with a girl, and some of the chaps foxed 'em an' heard her
sayin' `don't' to him, an' put it all round town."

"What did she say `don't' for?" I asked.

"He didn't tell me that, but I s'pose he was kissin' her or huggin' her
or something."

"Bob," I said presently, "didn't you try the little girl in Bendigo a
second time?"

"No," he said. "What was the use. She was a good little girl, and I
wasn't goin' to go botherin' her. I ain't the sort of cove that goes
hangin' round where he isn't wanted. But somehow I couldn't stay about
Bendigo after she gave me