bottom rib and the
hip-bone, and I sat up with a click, like the blade of a pocketknife.

"The other lassie was the big square-faced woman. The Pretty Girl looked
rather more frightened and disgusted than sentimental, but she had
plenty of pluck, and soon pulled herself together. She said I ought to
be ashamed of myself, a great big man like me, lying there in the dust
like a drunken tramp--an eyesore and a disgrace to all the world. She
told me to go to my camp, wherever that was, and sleep myself sober. The
square-jawed woman said I looked like a fool sitting there. I did feel
ashamed, and I reckon I did look like a fool--a man generally does in a
fix like that. I felt like one, anyway. I got up and walked away, and
it hurt me so much that I went over to West Bourke and went to the dogs
properly for a fortnight, and lost twenty quid on a game of draughts
against a blindfold player. Now both those women had umbrellas, but
I'm not sure to this day which of 'em it was that gave me the poke.
It wouldn't have mattered much anyway. I haven't borrowed one of Bret
Harte's books since."

Jake reflected a while. "The worst of it was," he said ruefully, "that
I wasn't sure that the girl or the woman didn't see through me, and
that worried me a bit. You never can tell how much a woman suspects, and
that's the worst of 'em. I found that out after I got married."

The Pretty Girl in the Army grew pale and thin and bigger-eyed. The
women said it was a shame, and that she ought to be sent home to her
friends, wherever they were. She was laid up for two or three days, and
some of the women cooked delicacies and handed 'em over the barracks
fence, and offered to come in and nurse her; but the square woman took
washing home and nursed the girl herself.

The Pretty Girl still sold _War Crys_ and took up collections, but in a
tired, listless, half shamed-faced way. It was plain that she was tired
of the Army, and growing ashamed of the Salvationists. Perhaps she had
come to see things too plainly.

You see, the Army does no good out back in Australia--except from a
business point of view. It is simply there to collect funds for hungry
headquarters. The bushmen are much too intelligent for the Army. There
was no poverty in Bourke--as it is understood in the city; there was
plenty of food; and camping out and roughing it come natural to the
bushmen. In cases of sickness, accident, widows or orphans, the chaps
sent round the hat, witho