'Not me!' Mike looked wildly for a way of escape.
'Here, here! but you must, Mike—I promised.'
'There's a dirty trick to serve 'a man!' Burton was genuinely alarmed.
'Yarding him up with a mob of old women! I'm hanged if I do it!'
'There's no mob. There's only one, and she's young and pleasant. Come along, I'll stand by you.'
'Gi' me your solemn oath you'll break away as soon as possible.'
'I do, I do.'
Mike was led on to the veranda and introduced to Lucy, who gave him a pleasant welcome. He placed his hat by his chair, drank his tea quietly, said very little and ate less, flipped his fingers once or twice at the little girl in a friendly way, looked quite imperturbable, and all the time was painfully ill at ease, and raging inwardly at Jim's delay. When Lucy left them in quest of fruit, he turned furiously on his mate.
'What's that she says about staying?'
'She wants us to take a shakedown in one of the huts for to-night. Mrs.
Macdougal will be home before dark. She wishes to see me.'
'By the big blue Bunyip, if you stay I'll bush you in the next scrubby gully, an' leave you to do a three days' perish!' Mike's tribulation was pitiful, but Jim laughed derisively.