CHAPTER XII.
Scottie found enough to keep Ned Gunliffe busy about the place for the next day or two, although all the other men were kept hard at work on the hills amongst the sheep.
He saw a good deal of Ess one way and another, and Ess had an uneasy feeling that he was making chances of speaking to her more than she thought right. She was half inclined to speak to her uncle about it, but a girl shrinks from talking of these things to a man. Men are so dense at times, and inclined to want something more tangible to go on than an inflection of a voice or a sidelong look, although these perhaps speak plainer than words to a woman.
But Ned Gunliffe soon removed any chance of doubt of his feelings. He met Ess after the men had gone to the hills, and there was no one about the place but Blazes, and he asked her point-blank if she would walk over the Ridge with him, as he had something to say.
“Won’t it keep, Ned?” she asked brightly, but with an inward qualm of premonition. She called all the men by their Christian names, on Scottie’s advice. It was obviously ridiculous to speak to “Mr. Blazes” and “Mr. Whip” or even “Mr. Thompson,” and she could not use the Mr. to one without using it to all. “I’m rather busy this morning. I have to—a lot of things to do.”
“I won’t keep you ten minutes,” he said eagerly. “Just stroll across to the edge of the Ridge with me. It’s something rather important.”
After that she could not very well refuse without being downright rude, she decided, so she turned to walk with him with a quiet “Very well, Ned.”
They walked in silence to the edge of the Ridge, where it ran down into the valley below, and stood there a moment looking along it and out across the dusty plains shining in the sun.
She tried to stop him speaking after his first few words, but he begged her to let him finish, and went on to pour an impassioned love speech on her troubled ears.