"Ask her--she won't refuse you."

"Ah! I wouldn't have the courage; a lady, you see, is different from a man."

"Write--that is easy enough. Now, promise me. And I can positively a.s.sure you that she will only be too glad." She put her hand on his. "Do promise me."

"I can refuse you nothing. But I need not write, for I think it very likely that now the sale of Kaburie is 'off' with Mr Gerrard, she will come back there to live. I had a telegram from her yesterday, in which she said that she might come back next month."

"Then, Mr Knowles, you will have to propose to her--that will be ever so much better than asking her for a bigger salary," and Kate laughed.

The ex-sailor blushed like a girl, then he tugged furiously at his moustache. "By Jove, Miss Fraser, I--I--you don't know--I--if I were not so old, and not so beastly poor--I was going to ask _you_ to marry me.

There, it's out now, and you'll think me an a.s.s."

Kate's manner changed. What she had feared he would one day say, he had now said, and she felt sorry for him.

"I think that you are such a man that any woman should be proud to hear what you have said to me, Mr Knowles," she said softly. "I know more about you than you think I do. But I shall never marry. I am going to stick to my father, and grow up into a nice old maid with fluffy white hair."

"You are not offended with me?"

"Offended! No, indeed. I feel proud that you should think so much of me as to have thought of asking me to be your wife," and she put out her hand to him. He raised it quickly to his lips, and then saying something incoherent about his wanting to see c.o.c.kney Smith's kangaroo pups, hurriedly left the room.

"That was over soon," breathed Kate, as she watched his well-set little figure striding across the paddock to Smith's humpy. "He _is_ a gentleman, if ever there was one in the world."

"What is the matter, little one?" asked her father, as he entered the room.

"Nothing, dad. I was only looking at Mr Knowles going over to Smith's humpy to look at the new kangaroo pups."

Fraseras eyes twinkled. He guessed what had occurred. "I suppose Charlie Broome," (the bank manager at Boorala) "will be the next, Kate. I had a letter from him this morning, saying he would be here to-morrow. You had one also, I saw."

"Oh, he is concerned about c.o.c.kney Smith's account," said Kate serenely; "that is why he is coming, now that he knows we are going away."

"Exactly," said Fraser, stroking his beard. "It's wonderful the interest he takes in c.o.c.kney Smith--an extraordinary-ordinary interest."

"Father, don't make fun of me--I can't help it. And his letter to me was so silly that I was ashamed to show it to you--I really was."

"Oh, well, I don't want to see it, my child. I've read too many love-letters when I was on the Bench--some of them so 'excessively tender,' as that old ruffian of a Judge Norbury used to say in Ireland, more than a hundred years ago, that I had to handle them with the greatest care, for fear they would fall into pieces. Now, who else is there that is going to solicit your lily-white hand--which isn't lily-white, but a distinct leather-brown--before we get away? Lacey, I suppose, will be the next."

"Not he, dad--the dear, sensible old man! He is wedded to his 'rag,'

as he calls the _Clarion_. But, at the same time, I do look forward to seeing him again, and hearing his beautiful rich brogue--especially when he is excited."

Gerrard came to the door.

"May I come in?" he asked His eyes were alight with subdued merriment, as he displayed an open letter. The mailman from Port Denison had just arrived.

"I have had a letter from my sister, Miss Fraser. She is leaving Sydney with my niece Mary, and coming to Ocho Rios. That is a bit of good luck for me, isn't it? And I am sure you and she and Mary will become great chums. She tells me that "--he hesitated a moment--"that as her affairs are in such a bad state she would like to come to me. And I am thunderingly glad of it Of course she doesn't know that Ocho Rios station has gone--in a way; but by the time she gets to Somerset--three months from now--she will find a new house, and we'll all be as happy as sandboys. Now, Miss Fraser, are you ready for an hour or two's fishing?

You'll come too, Fraser?"

"Won't I? Do you think _I_ would miss the last chance of fishing in Fraser's Creek?" and the big man took down his fishing-rod and basket from a peg on the rough, timbered sides of the sitting-room.

"Fill your pipe, dad, before we start."

"Fill it for me, Miss," and Fraser threw a piece of tobacco upon the table, together with his pocket-knife.

"And yours too, Mr Gerrard. I am a great hand at cutting up tobacco; I wish I were a man, and could smoke it. Oh, Mr Gerrard, I'm 'all of a quiver' to know that I shall see your little Mary."

"So am I, 'quite a quivering," and then as Gerrard looked at her beautiful face, he remembered his own scarred features, and something between a sigh and a curse came from his lips.

CHAPTER XIX

As Mrs Westonley had told Gerrard in her letter that she and Mary would not leave Marumbah for quite two months and proceed direct to Somerset, where she hoped he would meet them, he decided to lose no more time at Port Denison; and so a week after the abandonment of Fraser's Gully, he and his friends found themselves on board a steamer bound to the most northern port of the colony, just then coming into prominence as the rendezvous of the pearling fleet, although Thursday Island was also much favoured.

Before leaving Port Denison, he had written to his sister, and told her that he would meet her on her arrival at Somerset. "Jim is off his head with delight," he added; "in fact we both are, at the prospect of seeing you and Mary so soon. In one way I am glad that it will be barely three months before you get to Ocho Rios, for I want to get a new house put up; the present one isn't of much account"--this was his modified way of saying that there was no house there at all, it having been reduced to ashes, but he did not wish her to have the faintest inkling of any of his misfortunes, for fear that she would then refuse to add to his troubles and expenses by becoming a charge upon him. "And I have already bought some decent furniture, which I will take round with me in one of the pearlers. I do hope you will like the place, but you will look upon it at its very worst, for there have been heavy bush fires all about the station, which have played the deuce with the country for hundred of miles about. But the annual rains will begin to fall in four months, and then you will see it at its best. I am also going to make a garden, and plant no end of vegetables and flowers and things. There is a lovely little spot on one of the creeks; and Jim and I have been going over a thumping big box of seeds which I bought yesterday. You can consider that garden as made, with rock-melons and watermelons, and 'punkens'

and other fruit growing in it galore."

When Elizabeth Westonley read the letter she smiled--the first time almost since her husband's death. "How nice of your uncle, is it not, Mary? I should miss a garden dreadfully, and it is very thoughtful of him when he has so much work to do with his cattle. And see, he has sent me a draft for one hundred pounds for our expenses up to Somerset."

"Are we very, very, poor now, Aunt?"

"Very, very poor, Mary," and she sighed, "But still it might have been much worse for us if the people to whom Marumbah now belongs had not let me keep the furniture. Mr Brooke has bought it, and paid me three hundred and fifty pounds for it. And I am sure he only did it because he was sorry for us; I am certain he does not want it."

Brooke, indeed, had been very kind to the wife of his dead friend, and had pressed her to accept a loan of money, but this she had gratefully declined.

"How glad Uncle Tom must be that he has money to send you!"

"I am sure he must be. He is always thinking of others; and you and I, Mary, must do all we can for him. I shall be housekeeper and cook and all sorts of things, and you shall be chief housemaid, and help me, and we will try and make the house look nice."

"Yes, Aunt. And won't it be lovely to see Jim again! I can just imagine his staring eyes when he sees that I have brought Bunny. You'll keep it a dead secret, won't you?"

"Quite secret. I did not even mention Bunny in my letter. Now we must go on sewing these mosquito curtains; your uncle says that in the rainy season the mosquitoes nearly eat one alive, so I am going to make six, as I am sure he has none at Ocho Rios. He says they don't bite him, as his skin is too tough."

An hour before the steamer in which Gerrard and the Frasers had taken pa.s.sage cast off her lines from the jetty, Lacey came on board to say farewell, bringing with him Mrs Woodfall. The kind-hearted woman was almost on the verge of tears as she sat down beside Jim, and folded him to her ample, motherly bosom.

Gerrard presently drew her aside, and put two five pound notes in her hand.

"Indeed I won't, sir. I like the lad too much! No, sir, not even as a present. But I do hope you won't mind his writing to us sometimes. And will you mind my saying, Mr Gerrard, that me and my husband are very sorry to hear that your station has been burned, and that you have lost nearly all your cattle. And we have taken a liberty which I hope won't offend you--it is only a present for Jim, and won't give you any trouble on board the steamer, and the freight is paid right on to Somerset, and my husband put five hundredweight of best Sydney lucerne hay on board, so you won't have no trouble in feeding him; and, although I say it myself, there's not a better bred bull calf in North Queensland."

"Do you mean to say, Mrs Woodfall, that you have given Jim that Young Duke bull of yours? Why, he's worth fifty pounds! Oh no, I can't allow you to be so generous as that."

"You can't help it now, Mr Gerrard," said the good woman triumphantly; "my husband brought him on board last night, and he is now in his stall on the fore-deck as happy as a king, and I hope he will prove his good blood when you once have him at Ocho Rios. Come and look at him," and she smiled with pride as she led the way out of the saloon.

The animal was comfortably established in a stall on the fore-deck, and beside him was Woodfall feeding him with the "Sydney lucerne."

"Woodfall, that bull is going ash.o.r.e right away unless you take fifty pounds for him," said Gerrard; "he'll be worth five hundred pounds to me in a couple of years."

"Can't take it, Mr Gerrard. He's a present to Jim, so it's no use talking. But I would take it as a favour if you'd send me a line, and tell me how he bears the journey."