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Updated: June 9, 2025
I reckoned that it was only just going to be a hopeless, heart-breaking, stand-far-off-and-worship affair, as far as I was concerned like my first love affair, that I haven't told you about yet. I was tired of being pitied by good girls. You see, I didn't know women then. If I had known, I think I might have made more than one mess of my life. Jack rode home to Solong every night.
'I wouldn't have fancied that Ned would have thought of that, said Mrs Baker. 'When I first heard of my poor husband's death, I thought perhaps he'd been drinking again that worried me a bit. 'He never touched a drop after he left Solong, I can assure you, Mrs Baker, said Andy quickly.
I saw a little girl, rather plump, with a complexion like a New England or Blue Mountain girl, or a girl from Tasmania or from Gippsland in Victoria. Red and white girls were very scarce in the Solong district. She had the biggest and brightest eyes I'd seen round there, dark hazel eyes, as I found out afterwards, and bright as a 'possum's.
"You could easily get the balcony carried round," I said; "it wouldn't cost much you can get good carpenters at Solong." "Yes," he said. "I'll have it done after Christmas." Then he turned from the house and blinked down at me. "I am sorry," he said, "that there's no one at home. I sent the wife and family to Sydney for a change. I've got the two boys at the Sydney Grammar School.
We of Solong thought her hard, selfish and narrow-minded, and paltry; later on we thought she was a "bit touched;" but local people often think that of strangers. By her voice and her habit of whining she should have been a thin, sharp-faced, untidy, draggled-tailed woman in a back street in London, or a worn-out selector's wife in the bush. She whined about the climate.
We rode into Solong early in the day, turned our horses out in a paddock, and put up at M'Grath's pub. until such time as we made up our minds as to what we'd do or where we'd go. We had an idea of waiting until the shearing season started and then making Out-Back to the big sheds. Neither of us was in a hurry to go and face Mrs Baker.
It was a grand old road one of the old main coach-roads of New South Wales broad and white, metalled nearly all the way, and in nearly as good condition as on the day when the first passenger train ran into Solong and the last-used section of the old road was abandoned.
He looked worn and worried at the railway station more like himself as he was when he first came to Solong and as the train moved off I thought he looked well, frightened. That must have been nearly twenty years ago. London last winter. It was one of those days when London's lurid sun shows up for a little while like a smoky danger signal.
Being an old man, Johnson's memory for the long ago was better than mine, and I picked up links; and, in return, I told him what Solong was like now, and how some men he knew, who were going up, had gone down, and others, who were going to the dogs in his time, had gone up and we philosophized. About one he'd say, "Ah, well! who'd have thought it!
Neither had I. I told him that we lived at Solong, and didn't stay long. It saved time. "Ever heard of the Big Brassingtons?" "Yes." "Ever heard the yarn of the house that wasn't built?" I told him how much I had heard of it. "And that's about all any on 'em knows. Have you any idea who that man back yonder is?" "Yes, I have." "Well, who do you think it is?"
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