But of late his horse had been seen hanging up outside Porter's for an hour or so after sunset. He smoked, talked over the results of the last drought (if it happened to rain), and the possibilities of the next one, and played cards with old Porter; who took to winking, automatically, at his “old woman”, and nudging, and jerking his thumb in the direction of Lizzie when her back was turned, and Andy was scratching the nape of his neck and staring at the cards.
Lizzie told a lady friend of mine, years afterwards, how Andy popped the question; told it in her quiet way--you know Lizzie's quiet way (something of the old, privileged house-cat about her); never a sign in expression or tone to show whether she herself saw or appreciated the humour of anything she was telling, no matter how comical it might be. She had witnessed two tragedies, and had found a dead man in the bush, and related the incidents as though they were common-place.
It happened one day--after Andy had been coming two or three times a week for about a year--that she found herself sitting with him on a log of the woodheap, in the cool of the evening, enjoying the sunset breeze. Andy's arm had got round her--just as it might have gone round a post he happened to be leaning against. They hadn't been talking about anything in particular. Andy said he wouldn't be surprised if they had a thunderstorm before mornin'--it had been so smotherin' hot all day.
Andy smoked a good while, then he said: “Ah, well! It's a weary world.”
By-and-bye Andy said: “Ah, well; it's a lonely world, Lizzie.”
“Do you feel lonely, Andy?” asked Lizzie, after a while.
Lizzie let herself settle, a little, against him, without either seeming to notice it, and after another while she said, softly: “So do I, Andy.”
Andy knocked the ashes from his pipe very slowly and deliberately, and put it away; then he seemed to brighten suddenly, and said briskly: “Well, Lizzie! Are you satisfied!”
“Yes; I'm quite sure, Andy. I'm perfectly satisfied.”
But to-day--a couple of months after the proposal described above--Andy had trouble on his mind, and the trouble was connected with Lizzie Porter. He was putting up a two-rail fence along the old log-paddock on the frontage, and working like a man in trouble, trying to work it off his mind; and evidently not succeeding--for the last two panels were out of line. He was ramming a post--Andy rammed honestly, from the bottom of the hole, not the last few shovelfuls below the surface, as some do. He was ramming the last layer of clay when a cloud of white dust came along the road, paused, and drifted or poured off into the scrub, leaving long Dave Bentley, the horse-breaker, on his last victim.