"Well, he didn't talk Tony Taylor all the time," her father said, laughing.
"That's just what he did," she retorted. "It was Tony Taylor all the way, until I told him to shut up. They make me tired. Now, what are you laughing at?" she broke off to ask, as she looked up and caught her father's glance.
"Oh, nothing," he answered. "I was only wondering what Dickson had to say about him."
"About Tony? Well, he said—you remember what I told you he said the other night about his mother? Now he says that she would like to see some of us, or have some of us go over to the station some day. How can the poor thing see us when she is as blind as a flying fox?"
"But that's not what Dickson said about Tony. I asked——"
"Oh, chut, chut, chut!" the girl exclaimed, as she waved her hands quickly to and fro in front of his face. "Do please let the dear man rest while I get tea ready. Don't I tell you it makes me tired? Willy Dickson was bad enough all the way home, without having more of it here. People would think I care what happens to Tony Taylor;" and she stood looking down at her father with wide-opened blue eyes that were as innocent of deception as a babe's.
"I wish you did," her father said quickly. "He's one of the——"
"Now, you're not going to begin again?" she asked; and, without waiting for an answer, she turned away and began preparing the table for the evening meal.
Her father sat watching her as she moved about, not speaking again, for in turning away and busying herself with something, she had shown as much temper as ever she showed over anything, and her father understood the symptom. It was one of her peculiarities that she only evinced the fact that she had a temper when she was reminded that certain of the young men in the district had lost their hearts to her, and had left the neighbourhood because of their inability to repair that loss. Not that she objected to the first part of the indictment; it was rather pleasant, from her point of view, to have the command of the entire youth of the district. What she objected to was the going away of individual units from Birralong, just because she did not see fit to deny herself the pleasure of the society of all the other youths in exchange for that of just one. It always happened in that manner; always the departure of some youth for the western stations, the northern gold-fields, the coastal towns, or the droving routes, had been preceded by one, sometimes two, and sometimes more, interviews with her, in which, as she usually told them, they made her "feel tired." Always except once. Tony Taylor had gone off and had hardly wished her good-bye, and Tony and she had been as brother and sister, only more so, since the day when they first met and began to climb through all the standards of the State-school education, beginning at the very lowest of the grades, together.
Tony used to ride in to the school in those days, for Birralong was in its infancy and the school was only just opened. Taylor's Flat, the selection where he lived, was a dozen miles away, and Tony used to come and have dinner with her and her mother and father. He used to ride in bare-back on a big old splodgy dray-horse named Tom, which had been worked in the dray and at the plough until there was only jog-trot servility left in him. But Tony—clad in a pair of knickerbockers cut down from a pair of Taylor's moleskins, a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the neck innocent of a button, with neither shoes nor stockings on his brown little feet and legs, and with an old soft felt hat, discarded by the elder Taylor, and consequently as many sizes too big for Tony as his knickerbockers were—was a proud boy as he rode through the township every day to and from school, his little legs barely reaching across the broad back of the old dray-horse. He was the only one who rode in, and that, together with his eight years and quick wits, made him a hero in the mind of the Irish-named, Saxon-haired daughter of the schoolmaster.