Tam's a
lady's man in comparison," but loyal to his comrade above his amusement,
he added warmly: "You can't beat Jack by much, though, when it comes to
sticking to a pal," unconscious that he was prophesying of the years to
come, when the missus had become one of those pals.
"There's only the Dandy left now," Mac went on, as we spun along an ever
more definite track, "and he'll be all right as soon as he gets used to
it. Never knew such a chap for finding something decent in everybody he
strikes." Naturally I hoped he would "find something decent in me,"
having learned what it meant to the stockmen to have a woman pitchforked
into their daily lives, when those lives were to be lived side by side,
in camp, or in saddle, or at the homestead.
Mac hesitated a moment, and then out flashed one of his happy
inspirations. "Don't you bother about the Dandy," he said; "bushmen have a
sixth sense, and know a pal when they see one."
Just a bushman's pretty speech, aimed straight at the heart of a woman,
where all the pretty speeches of the bushfolk are aimed; for it is by the
heart that they judge us. "Only a pal," they will say, towering strong
and protecting; and the woman feels uplifted, even though in the same
breath they have honestly agreed with her, after careful scrutiny, that
it is not her fault that she was born into the plain sisterhood.
