rook, and barking his wrist against the sharp edge of the
drum. Then he would swear a little, and Lizzie would smile sadly and
gravely.

Brook did not go away that day, nor the next, but he took the coach
on the third day thereafter. He and Lizzie found a quiet corner to say
good-bye in. She showed some emotion for the first time, or, perhaps,
the second--maybe the third time--in that week of her life. They had
been out together in the moonlight every evening. (Brook had been
fifteen years in cities.) They had scarcely looked at each other that
morning--and scarcely spoken.

He looked back as the coach started and saw her sitting inside the big
kitchen window. She waved her hand--hopelessly it seemed. She had rolled
up her sleeve, and to Brook the arm seemed strangely white and fair
above the line of sunburn round the wrist. He hadn't noticed it before.
Her face seemed fairer too, but, perhaps, it was only the effect of
light and shade round that window.

He looked back again, as the coach turned the corner of the fence, and
was just in time to see her bury her face in her hands with a passionate
gesture which did not seem natural to her.

Brook reached the city next evening, and, "after hours," he staggered in
through a side entrance to the lighted parlour of a private bar.

They say that Lizzie broke her heart that year, but, then, the world
does not believe in such things nowadays.

BOARD AND RESIDENCE

One o'clock on Saturday. The unemployed's one o'clock on Saturday!
Nothing more can be done this week, so you drag yourself wearily and
despairingly "home," with the cheerful prospect of a penniless Saturday
afternoon and evening and the long horrible Australian-city Sunday
to drag through. One of the landlady's clutch--and she _is_ an old
hen--opens the door, exclaims:

"Oh, Mr Careless!" and grins. You wait an anxious minute, to postpone
the disappointment which you feel by instinct is coming, and then ask
hopelessly whether there are any letters for you.

"No, there's nothing for you, Mr Careless." Then in answer to the
unspoken question, "The postman's been, but there's nothing for you."

You hang up your hat in the stuffy little passage, and start upstairs,
when, "Oh, Mr Careless, mother wants to know if you've had yer dinner."

You haven't, but you say you have. You are empty enough inside, but
the emptiness is filled up, as it were, with the wrong sort of hungry
vacancy--gnawing anxiety.