Paul was distracted. He made as great an outcry about Sophie's going as he had about losing his stones. No one had thought he was as fond of her as he appeared to be. He wept and wailed continuously about her having gone away and left him. He went about begging for money in order to be able to go to America after Sophie; but no one would lend to him.
"You wait till Sophie's made a name for herself, Paul," everybody said, "then she'll send for you."
"Yes," he assented eagerly. "But I don't want to spend all that time here on the Ridge: I want to see something of life and the world again."
Paul got a touch of the sun during the ferment of those weeks, and then, for two or three days, Michael and Potch had their work cut out nursing him through the delirium of sun-stroke.
A week or so later the coach brought unexpected passengers—Jun Johnson and the bright-eyed girl who had gone down on the coach with him—and Jun introduced her to the boys at Newton's as his bride. He had been down in Sydney on his honeymoon, he said, that was all.
When Michael went into the bar at Newton's the same evening, he found Jun there, explaining as much to the boys.
"I know what you chaps think," he was saying when Michael entered. "You think I put up the checkmate on old Rum-Enough, Charley played. Well, you're wrong. I didn't know no more about it than you did; and the proof is—here I am. If I'd 'a' done it, d'y'r think I'd have come back? If I'd had any share in the business, d'y'r think I'd be showin' me face round here for a bit? Not much...."
Silence hung between him and the men. Jun talked through it, warming to his task with the eloquence of virtue, liking his audience and the stage he had got all to himself, as an outraged and righteously indignant man.
"I know you chaps—I know how you feel about things; and quite right, too! A man that'd go back on a mate like that—why, he's not fit to wipe your boots on. He ain't fit to be called a man; he ain't fit to be let run with the rest."
He continued impressively; "I didn't know no more about that business than any man-jack of you—no more did Mrs. Jun.... Bygones is bygones—that's my motto. But I tell you—and that's the strength of it—I didn't know no more about those stones of Rummy's than any man here. D'y' believe me?"