report; but this is how it culminated: [Pg 24] [Pg 24] "I tell you that I found you bullying him abominably, and whenever I find you bullying anybody I'll make it up to that body in my own way. And I won't have my way criticised by you." "Very good, Naomi. Very good indeed! But if you want to guard against all chance of the same thing happening next week, I should recommend you to be in for supper next Saturday, instead of gallivanting about the run by yourself and coming in at ten o'clock at night." "The run is mine, and I'll do what I like while I'm here." "Well, if you won't listen to reason, you might at least remember our engagement." "You mean your engagement? I remember the terms perfectly. I have only to write you a check for the next six months' salary any time I like, to put an end to it. And upon my word, Monty, you seem to want me to do so to-night!" [Pg 25] [Pg 25] CHAPTER III "HARD TIMES" CHAPTER III "HARD TIMES" It was the middle of the Sunday afternoon, when the young men of Taroomba were for the most part sound asleep upon their beds. They were wise young men enough, in ways, and to punctuate the weeks of hard labor at the wool-shed with thoroughly slack Sundays at the home station was a practice of the plainest common-sense. To do otherwise would have been to fly in the face of nature. Yet just because Naomi Pryse chose to settle herself in the veranda outside the sitting-room door with a book, the young man who had worked harder than any of the others during the week must needs be the one to spend the afternoon of rest at her feet, and with nothing but a lean veranda-post to shelter his broad back from the sun. This was Tom Chester, of whom Naomi had spoken highly to her protégé, the piano-tuner. Tom was newly and beautifully shaved, and he had further observed the Sabbath by putting on a white shirt and collar, and a suit of clothes in which a man[Pg 26] might have walked down Collins Street; but he seemed quite content to sit in them on the dirty veranda boards, for the sake of watching Naomi as she read. She had not a great deal to say to
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