“Why don’t you get married and settle down, Mitchell?” asked Peter, a little tired. “You’re a teetotaller.”
“If I got married I couldn’t settle down,” said Mitchell. “I reckon I’d be the loneliest man in Australia.” Peter gave him a swift glance. “I reckon I’d be single no matter how much married I might be. I couldn’t get the girl I wanted, and—ah, well!”
Mitchell’s expression was still quaintly humorous round the lower part of his face, but there was a sad light in his eyes. The strange light as of the old dead days, and he was still young.
The cornet had started in the surveyors’ camp.
“Their blooming tunes seem to fit in just as if they knew what we were talking about,” remarked Mitchell.
The cornet:
You’ll break my heart, you little bird,
That sings upon the flowering thorn
Thou mind’st me of departed joys,
Departed never to return.
“Damn it all,” said Mitchell, sitting up, “I’m getting sentimental.” Then, as if voicing something that was troubling him, “Don’t you think a woman pulls a man down as often as she lifts him up, Peter?”
“Some say so,” said Peter.
“Some say so, and they write it, too,” said Mitchell.