“Missy,” said John William, as he opened her the gate into the homestead yard, “it's impossible to tell when you're joking and when you're not.”
“Aha, I mean it to be,” cried the girl, bowing low to him, with the moon all over her. Then she stood up to her last inch, smiled full in his face, and turning, left him that smile to keep if he could. He would have followed her, but a burst of laughter in the men's room took him off his course, as good reasons occurred to him for calling in there first.
The room was a part of one of the farm outhouses. In each corner was a bunk, and on each bunk a man (counting Geordie), the fourth being one Old Willie, a retired salt, who drove the milk into Melbourne in the middle of every night. Old Willie was sitting on the side of his bunk and chuckling so windily that the sparks were flying out of his cutty like fireworks. There was nothing, however, to show which of the other three was the entertainer, for each turned silent and looked guilty when John William entered and planted himself in their midst.
“I just thought I'd tell you,” said he, with forced blandness, “that there is to be no more 'possum-shooting on this place for good and all. The man who shoots another 'possum, I'll hide him with my own hands, and the man who catches me shooting one, he may take and shoot me. For it's a grand shame, men, it's a grand shame! You heard Miss Oliver say it was, didn't you?” he added sharply, turning to the three.
For the moment they looked blank; the next, it was such a fierce person who was repeating the question, with eyes so like pointed pistols, that one after the other of those three men meekly perjured their souls.
“Exactly,” said John William, nodding his head in a deadly calm. “She said it was the grandest shame ever was; and if any man says she said anything else—well, he'd better let me hear him, that's all!”
CHAPTER VIII.—THE SAVING OF ARABELLA.
One night early in December, Arabella burst into Missy's room with singular abruptness. Missy had said good-night to the others and was very nearly in bed, but she had not seen Arabella, who had been out all the evening. Evidently she had only now come in. She was breathing quickly from hurrying up-hill; and there was a light in her countenance which Missy noticed in due course.