“I like it. And then I am the only woman about here now that Mrs Tallis has gone, and I feel more important than ever. But I do wish I were a man, and could help you more than I do.”
Between father and daughter there had ever been the greatest love and confidence, and their existence, though often monotonous, was a happy one. To her father's miners, “Miss Kate” was a fairy goddess, and consternation reigned among them when one day a passing Jewish hawker told them that it was rumoured that Parson Forde was “a stickin' up ter Miss Fraser, and the match was as good as made.”
The men had bought a couple of bottles of whisky from the hawker when this portentous announcement was made, and little “Cockney Smith” the youngest man of the party, who was just about to drink off the first grog he had tasted since his semi-annual spree at Boorala, set it down untouched.
“I thought the bloomin' Holy Joe was a comin' 'ere pretty frequent,” he said, “but didn't think he was after Miss Kate. Well, all I can say is,”—he raised his glass—“that suthin'll 'appin to 'im. I 'ope 'e may be bloomin' well drownded when 'e's crossin' a creek.”
“Shut up, Cockney,” growled Sam Young, an old grey-haired miner, “it's only a Boorala yarn, and Boorala is as full of liars as the bottomless pit is full of wood and coal merchants. And it doesn't become you to call the parson a Holy Joe. Maybe you've forgottten that when you busted your last cheque at Hooley's pub in Boorala, and had the dilly trimmings, that it was the parson who brought you back here, you boozy little swine. Didn't he, boys?”
“You bet he did,” was the unanimous response.
“And come here and give you four good nips a day outer his own flask until you was rid of the green dogs with red eyes, and flamin' fiery tails that you was screechin' about,” went on Sam, relentlessly. “If she's going to hitch up with the parson it can't be helped. Anyways he's the right sort of a sky pilot; a white man all over, and can shoe a horse, and do a bit of bullocking{*} as well as he can preach.”
* Hard manual labour.
“Wasn't there some talk about her and the Black Police officer being engaged?” said the hawker, who was a great retailer of bush gossip.
“Wasn't there some talk of you havin' done time for trying to do the fire insurance people?” angrily retorted Young, who was wroth at the hawker's familiar way of speaking of the goddess of Fraser's Gully.