'Oh, I'll come, right enough, chum. But that's a month. Why, spare me days, surely I---'
'You'll have to go, Ted. That's his last ring. Sister Agatha's looking. Don't seem to take much notice o' me, Ted, or she might-- Oh, good-bye, Ted! Don't seem to be noticing. Good-bye, good-bye!'
My head was back in the cow's flank now, and very hot tears were running down my cheeks and 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 inertia to a plane upon which life was a master musician, and all my veins the strings from which he drew his magic melodies.
IV
A week passed, and brought us to another Sunday. On this morning I stepped out of bed into the dimness of the dawn light, full of elation.
'It's only seven weeks now to next visitors' day. In seven weeks I shall see Ted again. Seven times seven days--why, it's nothing, really,' I told myself.
By this time I had devised a plan for helping Time on his way. It hardly commends itself to my mature judgment, but great satisfaction was derived from it at the time. It consisted merely of telling myself in so many words that a month comprised eight weeks. Thus, ostensibly, I had seven weeks to wait. But my secret self knew that the reality was incredibly better than that. Next Sunday, outwardly, I should have only six weeks to wait, the following Sunday only five. And then, a week later, with only a paltry four weeks to wait, my secret self would be thrilling with the knowledge that actually the day itself had come, and only an hour or so divided me from Ted. Childish, perhaps, but it comforted me greatly; and, to some extent, I have indulged the practice through life. With a mile to walk when tired, I have caught myself, even quite late in life, comforting myself with the absurd assurance that another 'couple of miles' would bring me to my destination! To the naturally sanguine temperament this particular folly would be impossible, though its antithesis is pretty frequently indulged in, I fancy.