die-away, bread-and-butter misses. There's something OF Till there is, and she's always on for a lark. I never met such girls for larks as her and 'er sister. The very last time I was there, they took and hung up … me and some other fellers had been stoppin' up a bit late the night before, and kickin' up a bit of a shindy, and what did those girls do? They got the barman to come into my room while I was asleep, and hang a bucket o' water to one of the beams over the bed. Then I'm blamed if they didn't tie a string from it to my big toe! I gives a kick, down comes the bucket and half drowns me.— Gosh, how those girls did laugh!"
"H'm!" said Mahony dubiously; while Purdy in his turn chewed the cud of a pleasant memory.—"Well, I for my part should be glad to see you married and settled, with a good wife always beside you."
"That's just the rub," said Purdy, and vigorously scratched his head.
"Till's a first-class girl as a sweetheart and all that; but when I come to think of puttin' my head in the noose, from now till doomsday—why then, somehow, I can't bring myself to pop the question."
"There's going to be no trifling with the girl's feelings, I hope, sir?"
"Bosh! But I say, Dick, I wish you'd turn your peepers on 'er and tell me what you make of 'er. She's A1 'erself, but she's got a mother. … By Job, Dick, if I thought Tilly 'ud ever get like that … and they're exactly the same build, too."
It would certainly be well for him to inspect Purdy's flame, thought Mahony. Especially since the anecdote told did not bear out the good impression left by the letter—went far, indeed, to efface it. Still, he was loath to extend his absence by spending a night at Geelong, where, a, it came out, the lady lived; and he replied evasively that it must depend on the speed with which he could put through his business in Melbourne.
Purdy was silent for a time. Then, with a side-glance at his companion, he volunteered: "I say, Dick, I know some one who'd suit you."
"The deuce you do!" said Mahony, and burst out laughing. "Miss Tilly's sister, no doubt?"
"No, no—not her. Jinn's all right, but she's not your sort. But they've got a girl living with 'em—a sort o' poor relation, or something—and she's a horse of quite another colour.—I say, old man, serious now, have you never thought o' gettin' spliced?"
Again Mahony laughed. At his companion's words there descended to him, once more, from some shadowy distance, some pure height, the rose-tinted vision of the wife-to-be which haunts every man's youth. And, in ludicrous juxtaposition, he saw the women, the only women he had encountered since coming to the colony: the hardworking, careworn wives of diggers; the harridans, sluts and prostitutes who made up the balance.
He declined to be drawn. "Is it old Moll Flannigan or one of her darlints you'd be wishing me luck to, ye spalpeen?"
"Man, don't I say I've FOUND the wife for you?" Purdy was not jesting, and did not join in the fresh salvo of laughter with which Mahony greeted his words. "Oh, blow it, Dick, you're too fastidious—too damned particular! Say what you like, there's good in all of 'em—even in old Mother Flannigan 'erself—and 'specially when she's got a drop inside 'er. Fuddle old Moll a bit, and she'd give you the very shift off her back.—Don't I thank the Lord, that's all, I'm not built like you! Why, the woman isn't born I can't get on with. All's fish that comes to my net.—Oh, to be young, Dick, and to love the girls! To see their little waists, and their shoulders, and the dimples in their cheeks! See 'em put up their hands to their bonnets, and how their little feet peep out when the wind blows their petticoats against their legs!" and Purdy rose in his stirrups and stretched himself, in an excess of wellbeing.
"You young reprobate!"
"Bah!—you! You've got water in your veins."
"Nothing of the sort! Set me among decent women and there's no company I enjoy more," declared Mahony.
"Fish-blood, fish-blood!—Dick, it's my belief you were born old."
Mahony was still young enough to be nettled by doubts cast on his vitality. Purdy laughed in his sleeve. Aloud he said: "Well, look here, old man, I'll lay you a wager. I bet you you're not game, when you see that tulip I've been tellin' you about, to take her in your arms and kiss her. A fiver on it!"
"Done!" cried Mahony. "And I'll have it in one note, if you please!"
"Bravo!" cried Purdy. "Bravo, Dick!" And having gained his end, and being on a good piece of road between post-and-rail fences, he set spurs to his horse and cantered off, singing as he went:
SHE WHEELS A WHEELBARROW,
THROUGH STREETS WIDE AND NARROW,
CRYING COCKLES, AND MUSSELS,
ALIVE, ALIVE-OH!
But the sun was growing large in the western sky; on the ground to the left, their failing shadows slanted out lengthwise; those cast by the horses' bodies were mounted on high spindle-legs. The two men ceased their trifling, and nudged by the fall of day began to ride at a more business-like pace, pushing forward through the deep basin of Bacchus's marsh, and on for miles over wide, treeless plains, to where the road was joined by the main highway from the north, coming down from Mount Alexander and the Bendigo. Another hour, and from a gentle eminence the buildings of Melbourne were visible, the mastheads of the many vessels riding at anchor in Hobson's Bay. Here, too, the briny scent of the sea, carrying up over grassy flats, met their nostrils, and set Mahony hungrily sniffing. The brief twilight came and went, and it was already night when they urged their weary beasts over the Moonee ponds, a winding chain of brackish waterholes. The horses shambled along the broad, hilly tracks of North Melbourne; warily picked their steps through the city itself. Dingy oil-lamps, set here and there at the corners of roads so broad that you could hardly see across them, shed but a meagre light, and the further the riders advanced, the more difficult became their passage: the streets, in process of laying, were heaped with stones and intersected by trenches. Finally, dismounting, they thrust their arms through their bridles, and laboriously covered the last half-mile of the journey on foot. Having lodged the horses at a livery-stable, they repaired to a hotel in Little Collins Street. Here Purdy knew the proprietor, and they were fortunate enough to secure a small room for the use of themselves alone.
Chapter V
Melbourne is built on two hills and the valley that lies between.
It was over a year since Mahony or Purdy had been last in the capital, and next morning, on stepping out of the "Adam and Eve," they walked up the eastern slope to look about them. From the summit of the hill their view stretched to the waters of the Bay, and its forest of masts. The nearer foreground was made up of mud flats, through which a sluggish, coffee-coloured river wound its way to the sea. On the horizon to the north, the Dandenong Ranges rose storm-blue and distinct, and seemed momently to be drawing nearer; for a cold wind was blowing, which promised rain. The friends caught their glimpses of the landscape between dense clouds of white dust, which blotted everything out for minutes at a time, and filled eyes, nose, ears with a gritty powder.
Tiring of this they turned and descended Great Collins Street—a spacious thoroughfare that dipped into the hollow and rose again, and was so long that on its western height pedestrians looked no bigger than ants. In the heart of the city men were everywhere at work, laying gas and drain-pipes, macadamising, paving, kerbing: no longer would the old wives' tale be credited of the
