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70 into her beautiful eyes in the moonlight and smiled happily. "Half of that's yours, Chicken."

"Mine!"

"Yes—we're 'mates'—we've always been 'mates' and out in Australia your 'mate' always has half of everything."

"Oh, that's absurbabsurd [sic], Hen. Half a loaf when you haven't anything else—or half—half—" She couldn't think of anything else just then.

"We were 'mates,' dear, when I went away and if we aren't to remain 'mates,' I wish I had never gone. It has been awful—alone in the bush—never seeing you. I have been away a whole year and you have had to fight it out alone when I might have been here to help you."

"But you have helped me—more than you could have done by staying by me."

"Then I am content, at least—"

"At least?"

"Almost."

"What more can you want?"

"Can't you guess, Chicken?" His voice was very tender, very low and carried her thoughts back for years to the night when first she played "Juliet" to his "Romeo," and he murmured to her in the Balcony Scene in a voice that woke an echo in her own heart which had sounded there ever since. But to her he had always ben "Hen-mother." She was like a child; she had told him all her troubles, all her joys; to him her word, her wish was a law, and yet they were 'mates' who had grown necessary to each other, although they had never spoken of love.

"I know—" she said it very tenderly, as she took his hand and nestled a little closer. "I know—you want me to give you a horse-hair pillow in place of your old flock one."

He looked round. Her eyes were infinitely gentle,