Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/217

 'stringy bark' lasts long; and the action brought the past near to him―nearer than he wished. He did not like to think of that hungry, wretched selection existence; he felt more contempt than pity for the old-fashioned, unhappy boy, who used to let down the rails there, and drive the cattle through.

He had spent those fifteen years in cities, and was come here, prompted more by curiosity than anything else, to have a quiet holiday. His father was dead; his other relations had moved away, leaving a tenant on the old selection.

Brook rested his elbow on the top rail of an adjacent panel and watched the cattle pass, and thought until Lizzie―the tenant's niece―shoved the red steer through and stood gravely regarding him (Brook, and not the steer); then he shifted his back to the fence and looked at her. He had not much to look at: a short, plain, thin girl of nineteen, with rather vacant grey eyes, dark ringlets, and freckles; she had no complexion to speak of; she wore an ill-fitting print frock, and a pair of men's 'lastic sides several sizes too large for her. She was ' studying for a school-teacher;' that was the height of the ambition of local youth. Brook was studying her.

He turned away to put up the rails. The lower rail went into its place alright, but the top one had got jambedjammed [sic], and it stuck as though it was spiked. He worked the rail up and down and to and fro, took it undiT his arm and tugged it; but he might as well have pulled at one of the posts. Then he lifted the loose end as high as he could, and let it fall―jumping back out of the way at the same time; this loosened it,