The Beechams were vacating Five–Bob almost immediately — before Christmas. Grannie, aunt Helen, and uncle Jay–Jay went down to say good-bye to the ladies, who were very heartbroken about being uprooted from Five–Bob, but they approved of their nephew settling things at once and starting on a clean sheet. They intended taking up their residence — hiding themselves, they termed it — in Melbourne. Harold would be detained in Sydney some time during the settling of his affairs, after which he intended to take anything that turned up. He had been offered the management of Five–Bob by those in authority, but could not bring himself to accept managership where he had been master. His great desire, now that Five–Bob was no longer his, was to get as far away from old associations as possible.

He had seen his aunts off, superintended the muster of all stock on the place, dismissed all the female and most of the male employees, and surrendered the reins of government, and as Harold Augustus Beecham, boss of Five–Bob, on Monday, the 21st of December 1896, was leaving the district for ever. On Sunday, the 20th of December, he came to bid us good-bye and to arrive at an understanding with me concerning what I had said to him the Sunday before. Grannie, strange to say, never suspected that there was likely to be anything between us. Harold was so undemonstrative, and had always come and gone as he liked at Caddagat: she overlooked the possibility of his being a lover, and in our intercourse allowed us almost the freedom of sister and brother or cousins.

On this particular afternoon, after we had talked to grannie for a little while, knowing that he wished to interview me, I suggested that he should come up the orchard with me and get some gooseberries. Without demur from anybody we set off, and were scarcely out of hearing before Harold asked me had I really meant what I said.

“Certainly,” I replied. “That is, if you really care for me, and think it wise to choose me of all my sex.”

Ere he put it in words I read his answer in the clear brown eyes bent upon me.

“Syb, you know what I feel and would like, but I think it would be mean of me to allow you to make such a sacrifice.”

I knew I was not dealing with a booby, but with a sensible clear-sighted man, and so studied to express myself in a way which would not for an instant give him the impression that I was promising to marry him because — what I don’t know and it doesn’t matter much, but I said:

“Hal, don’t you think it is a little selfish of you to want to throw me over just because you have lost your money? You are young, healthy, have good character and influential connections, and plenty of good practical ability and sense, so, surely, you will know no such thing as failure if you meet the world bravely. Go and be the man you are; and if you fail, when I am twenty-one I will marry you, and we will help each other. I am young and strong, and am used to hard work, so poverty will not alarm me in the least. If you want me, I want you.

“Syb, you are such a perfect little brick that I couldn’t be such a beggarly cur as to let you do that. I knew you were as true as steel under your funny little whims and contrariness; and could you really love me now that I am poor?”

I replied with vigour:

“Do you think I am that sort, that cares for a person only because he has a little money? Why! that is the very thing I am always preaching against. If a man was a lord or a millionaire I would not have him if I loved him not, but I would marry a poor cripple if I loved him. It wasn’t because you owned Five–Bob Downs that I liked you, but because you have a big heart in which one would have room to get warm, and because you are true, and because you are kind and big and —” Here I could feel my voice getting shaky, and being afraid I would make a fool of myself by crying, I left off.

“Syb, I will try and fix matters up a bit, and will claim you in that time if I have a home.”

“Claim me, home or not, if you are so disposed, but I will make this condition. Do not tell anyone we are engaged, and remember you are perfectly free. If you see a woman you like more than me, promise me on your sacred word that you will have none of those idiotic unjust ideas of keeping true to me. Promise.”

“Yes, I will promise,” he said easily, thinking then, no doubt, as many a one before him has thought, that he would never be called upon to fulfil his word.

“I will promise in return that I will not look at another man in a matr............