d into the milk-pail. My lip was cut under my
front teeth, and--'Oh, Ted, first thing in the morning--don't forget
the Sunday,' I implored, as he passed away, drawing one hand
caressingly across my shoulder as he went.

In a hazy, golden dream I finished my milking, staggering and swaying
up to the dairy under my two brimming pails, and turned to the
remaining tasks of the evening, longing for bed-time and liberty to
review my amazing good fortune in privacy; thirsting for it, as a
tippler for his liquor. I dared not think about it at all before
bed-time. In some recondite way it seemed that would have been indecent,
an exposure of my new treasure to the vulgar gaze. Now, it was
securely locked away inside me, absolutely hidden. And there it must
remain until, lights being doused, I could draw it out under the
friendly cover of my coarse bed-clothes (after visiting-day sheets had
been removed) and voluptuously abandon myself to it. Meantime, I moved
among my fellows as one having possession of a talisman which raised
him far above the cares and preoccupations of the common herd. I even
looked forward with pleasure to the next day, to Monday! I should have
no breakfast. Sister Agatha would be on duty. I should be pestered,
and probably robbed of dinner, too. But what of that? The coming of
that cheerless and hungry Monday would carry me forward one whole day
toward the next visitors' Sunday, and--Ted.

I had not begun yet to consider in any way the question of how seeing
Ted could help me. Enough for me that I had seen him; that I had a
friend; and that I should see him again. Indeed, even if I had had no
hope of seeing him again, I still should have been thrilled through
and through by the delicious kindliness, the romantic interest of the
thought that, out there in the world beyond Myall Creek, I had a
friend; a free and powerful man, moving about independently among the
citizens of the great world, in which Sister Agatha was a mere nobody;
in which all sorts of delightful things continually happened, in which
task work was no more than one incident in a daily round compact of
other interests, hazards, meetings, and--and of freedom.

It was extraordinary the manner in which ten minutes in the society of
a man, who would have been adjudged by many most uninspiring, had
transformed me. It seemed the mere sight of this simple bushman, in
his 'bell-bottomed' Sunday trousers, had lifted me up from a slough of
hopeless in