He seemed a hopeless case.
“Sometimes,” he said, “sometimes I wish that I wasn’t so blessed long.”
“There’s that there deaf jackaroo,” he reflected presently. “He’s something in the same fig about girls as I am. He’s too deaf and I’m too long.”
“How do you make that out?” I asked. “He’s got three girls, to my knowledge, and, as for being deaf, why, he gasses more than any man in the town, and knows more of what’s going on than old Mother Brindle the washerwoman.”
“Well, look at that now!” said the Giraffe, slowly. “Who’d have thought it? He never told me he had three girls, an’ as for hearin’ news, I always tell him anything that’s goin’ on that I think he doesn’t catch. He told me his trouble was that whenever he went out with a girl people could hear what they was sayin’—at least they could hear what she was sayin’ to him, an’ draw their own conclusions, he said. He said he went out one night with a girl, and some of the chaps foxed ’em an’ heard her sayin’ ‘don’t’ to him, an’ put it all round town.”
“What did she say ‘don’t’ for?” I asked.
“He didn’t tell me that, but I s’pose he was kissin’ her or huggin’ her or something.”
“Bob,” I said presently, “didn’t you try the little girl in Bendigo a second time?”
“No,” he said. “What was the use. She was a good little girl, and I wasn’t goin’ to go botherin’ her. I ain’t the sort of cove that goes hangin’ round where he isn’t wanted. But somehow I couldn’t stay about Bendigo after she gave me the hint, so I thought I’d come over an’ have a knock round on this side for a year or two.”
“And you never wrote to her?”