"He'll get that—if we can fix it," Watty Frost said.
"Yes," Michael agreed.
"Can't think why you're taking so much trouble with this place if Paul and Sophie are going away soon, Michael," George Woods remarked at the end of their talk.
"They're not gone yet," Michael said, and went on fastening a sapling across the brushwood he had laid over the roof of the shed.
The men laughed. They knew Paul well enough to realise that there was no betting on what he would or would not do. They understood Michael did not approve of his plans for Sophie. Nobody did. But what was to be done? If Paul had the money and got the notion into his head that it would be a good thing to go away, Sophie and he would probably go away. But the money would not last, people thought; then Sophie and her father would come back to the Ridge again, or Michael would go to look for them. Being set adrift on the world with no one to look after her would be hard on Sophie, it was agreed, but nobody saw how Rouminof was to be prevented from taking her away if he wanted to.
CHAPTER III
The unwritten law of the Ridge was that mates pooled all the opal they found and shared equally, so that all Jun held was Rouminof's, and all that he held was Jun's. Ordinarily one man kept the lot, and as Jun was the better dealer and master spirit, it was natural enough he should hold the stones, or, at any rate, the best of them. But Rouminof was like a child with opal. He wanted some of the stones to handle, polish up a bit, and show round. Jun humoured him a good deal. He gave Paul a packet of the stuff they had won to carry round himself. He was better tempered and more easy-going with Rouminof, the men admitted, than most of them would have been; but they could not believe Jun was going to deal squarely by him.
Jun and his mate seemed on the best of terms. Paul followed him about like a dog, referring to him, quoting him, and taking his word for everything. And Jun was openly genial with Paul, and talked of the times they were going to have when they went down to Sydney together to sell their opal.
Paul was never tired of showing his stones, and almost every night at Newton's he spread them out on a table, looked them over, and held them up to admiration. It was good stuff, but the men who had seen Jun's package knew that he had kept the best stones.