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The 'find' was kept dark pending Mike's return, and when the Peetrees had secured their ground, the mates were given the pick of the lead. The discovery leaked out as soon as the friends started operations, and a little rush from the original field followed. Jim was now a mile and a half from Mrs. Kyley's shanty, and derived some satisfaction from that fact.
Coming up from their claim one evening at sundown after a particularly hard day, the mates found Aurora busy at the fire preparing their tea. They hailed her with shouts of thankfulness and welcome. She was bare-armed and bare-headed; a snowy-white apron of Mrs. Kyley's covered her frock, and was, if anything, an additional adornment to her trim figure.
See here, Jimmy, she continued gravely, 'Quigley doesn't like you; he is looking for a chance to do you a mischief, and he would have had his chance the other night if I hadn't overlooked you like a mothering hen, and sold you good creek water at a shilling the nip. 'I did act the fool, I admit. 'Never a bit; but don't give Quigley his chance by numbing your good sense with Mary Kyley's rum.
He'd have eaten you if you'd taken him on as you stood. 'I'm much obliged, old man, answered Done mournfully. 'I suppose I made an outrageous ass of myself. But he went back to Mrs. Kyley's bar again on the Monday evening, and there got good advice from Aurora. 'You don't like this rubbish, Jimmy, she said, serving him with the drink he had asked for.
There were not so many women about the rush but that scores of sober, reputable diggers would have travelled far and drunk much indifferent rum merely for the privilege of gazing upon the merry, handsome face of a girl like Aurora Griffiths. Now she was in some measure their championess there was more reason for offering devotion at her shrine, and Kyley's saw busy nights.
Kyley's exorbitant rates for laundry work, and for the others who cherished a respect for cleanliness the nearest the ordinary digger came to Godliness Saturday afternoon was washing day, and scores might have been seen after crib outside their tents performing the laundress's office, usually astride a log, on which 'the wash' was spread to be alternately splashed and soaped and rubbed.
You know you're safe, anyhow, when there's not priest or parson to be got for love or money. Come, hurry up, there's enough for all, and my contribution is an armful of Mary Kyley's hot scones. The butt of a tree lying a few yards from the fire served the diggers as table and on to this Jim lifted Aurora. 'That's your place, he said, 'at the head of the board.
Ben worked on his claim by day, and at night he officiated as 'chucker-out' in Mrs. Kyley's bar for a bar it was, to all intents and purposes. Ben's duty was not to suppress disorder, but merely to see that the common disorder did not develop into licentiousness, to the danger of Mrs. Kyley's property or the detriment of her trade. Mrs.
'Divorce him and take up with the Cornishman! replied the raffish washerwoman, exploding into Gargantuan laughter. Done had often thought of Ryder since the night of the troopers' raid on Mrs. Kyley's grog-store, but had seen nothing of him in the meantime. Mike recalled him to his mind again as they were lying out in the moonlight on a Sunday night about two weeks later.
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