large cake for her darling, and served out generous
slices. Then, drawing up a chair she sat down beside him, to drink in
his news.

From his place at the farther end of the table Mahony studied the
trio--these three young faces which were so much alike that they might
have been different readings of one and the same face. Polly, by reason
of her woman's lot, looked considerably the oldest. Still, the
lamplight wiped out some of the shadows, and she was never more
girlishly vivacious than with Ned, entering as she did with zest into
his plans and ideas--more sister now than wife. And Ned showed at his
best with Polly: he laid himself out to divert her; forgot to brag or
to swear; and so natural did it seem for brother to open his heart to
sister that even his egoistic chatter passed muster. As for young
Jerry, who in a couple of days was to begin work in the same claim as
Ned, he sat round-eyed, his thoughts writ large on his forehead. Mahony
translated them thus: how in the world I could ever have sat prim and
proper on the school-bench, when all this--change, adventure,
romance--was awaiting me? Jerry was only, Mahony knew, to push a
wheelbarrow from hole to water and back again for many a week to come;
but for him it would certainly be a golden barrow, and laden with gold,
so greatly had Ned's tales fired his imagination.

The onlooker felt odd man out, debarred as he was by his profounder
experience from sharing in the young people's light-legged dreams. He
took up his book. But his reading was cut into by Ned's sprightly
account of the Magpie rush; by his description of an engine at work on
the Eureka, and of the wooden airpipes that were being used to
ventilate deep-sinkings. There was nothing Ned did not know, and could
not make entertaining. One was forced, almost against one's will, to
listen to him; and on this particular evening, when he was neither
sponging, nor acting the Big Gun, Mahony toned down his first sweeping
judgment of his young relative. Ned was all talk; and what impressed
one so unfavourably--his grumbling, his extravagant boastfulness--was
the mere thistledown of the moment, puffed off into space. It mattered
little that he harped continually on "chucking up" his job. Two years
had passed since he came to Ballarat, and he was still working for hire
in somebody else's hole. He still groaned over the hardships of the
life, and still toiled on--and all the rest was just the froth and
braggadoc