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It’s all very well for him to tell himself that he’s alone, bar trees and birds; he can’t make out to believe it; whichever way he turns the whole place seems to be alive and looking on. Don’t think it was Uma’s yarns that put me out; I don’t value native talk a fourpenny-piece; it’s a thing that’s natural in the bush, and that’s the end of it.

Tarleton set my leg, and made a regular missionary splice of it, so that I limp to this day. That done, he took down my evidence, and Uma’s, and Maea’s, wrote it all out fine, and had us sign it; and then he got the chiefs and marched over to Papa Randall’s to seize Case’s papers. It was I that bought her out at a mighty reasonable figure, for she was in a hurry to get home.

O no, don’t you misunderstand meUma’s on the square.” He spoke eager, I thought, and that surprised and pleased me. “Indeed,” he went on, “I shouldn’t make so sure of getting her, only she cottoned to the cut of your jib. All you have to do is to keep dark and let me work the mother my own way; and I’ll bring the girl round to the captain’s for the marriage.”

Me ’fraid!” cried the captain. “My dear friend, I defy her! I don’t let her put her foot in here, only I suppose ’s different to-day, for the marriage. ’s Uma’s mother.”

I was so greedy of her nearness that I sat down to dinner with my lass upon my knee, made sure of her with one hand, and ate with the other. Ay, and more than that. She was the worst cook I suppose God made; the things she set her hand to it would have sickened an honest horse to eat of; yet I made my meal that day on Uma’s cookery, and can never call to mind to have been better pleased.