Then I felt her crying or laughing, or half crying and half laughing. I’m not sure to this day which it was.
‘Why won’t you kiss me, Mary? Don’t you love me?’
‘Because,’ she said, ‘because—because I—I don’t—I don’t think it’s right for—for a girl to—to kiss a man unless she’s going to be his wife.’
Then it dawned on me! I’d forgot all about proposing.
‘Mary,’ I said, ‘would you marry a chap like me?’
And that was all right.
Next morning Mary cleared out my room and sorted out my things, and didn’t take the slightest notice of the other girls’ astonishment.
But she made me promise to speak to old Black, and I did the same evening. I found him sitting on the log by the fence, having a yarn on the quiet with an old Bushman; and when the old Bushman got up and went away, I sat down.
‘Well, Joe,’ said Black, ‘I see somebody’s been spoiling your face for the dance.’ And after a bit he said, ‘Well, Joe, what is it? Do you want another job? If you do, you’ll have to ask Mrs Black, or Bob’ (Bob was his eldest son); ‘they’re managing the station for me now, you know.’ He could be bitter sometimes in his quiet way.