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she said, confused.
    ‘No, it was him.’ Craig sounded terse.
    ‘Him?’
    ‘Roper, of course. He bought her off. Larry Roper gave Elva the money to clear out. Not just to Sydney but overseas—big money she couldn’t resist.’
    ‘Go on,’ she urged. He shrugged.
    ‘Need I? Can’t you understand that it was a case of “if I can’t have her neither can you” as applied to me?’
    ‘He could have been considering you, thinking you shouldn’t be hurt as well,’ Georgina suggested, though unconvinced herself.
    ‘Only it wasn’t; it was pure Roper. He’s like that. Look, Georgina, for your own good put any ideas out of your mind as regards going to this man. Not only is he soured by women, he’s a tyrant to his own sex. You couldn’t win either way. If you went as a female he would show you the way out, and if you went as a male ’
    ‘He’d kick me out?’
    ‘I think,’ said Craig, ‘you have the general idea.'
    ‘Yet he did advertise,’ Georgina demurred.
    ‘Forget it.’
    ‘And do what instead?’ she asked.
    ‘I wish I could offer you something, only I’m barely able to keep going myself.’ Craig gave a rueful shrug. I wouldn’t put much reliance on landing a job at any of the stations, either. The boom has been remarkable for its non-appearance this year, and the stations simply aren’t putting on extra hands.’
    ‘Well, I’m still not going back,’ Georgina said with all the stubbornness of which he had previously accused her, ‘this is my kind of country. Here I belong.’
    ‘Famous last words! ’ he mocked.
    ‘I mean them.’
    ‘Then it’s on your shoulders.’ He looked slyly at Georgina. ‘Incidentally,’ he probed, ‘a girl’s shoulders or a boy’s?’
    ‘I told you that I’d finished with that idea,’ she told him. ‘Yes, but I think you could change your mind.’
    ‘Then which do you advise?’
    ‘Which?’ he echoed blankly.
    ‘Male or female shoulders?’
    ‘Neither.’
    ‘But if you were advising,’ she persisted.
    ‘Determined baggage, aren’t you?’ he grinned at her. ‘Which?’ she insisted.
    ‘I’d say a male’s shoulders. A woman wouldn’t last two minutes there.’
    Georgina was thoughtful. ‘Yet he must have loved her,’ she said at length.
    ‘Elva?’
    ‘Yes. I mean, you said it was a lot of money that he gave her.’
    ‘He has a lot,’ Craig said drily.
    By mutual unspoken consent they dropped the subject. Georgina climbed on to the motorcycle again and began following the car as she had before.
    Later in the afternoon the old machine gave up altogether. Craig spent another hour on it, then turned and advised Georgina to kiss it goodbye.
    ‘But what will I do? How will I get there?'
    ‘Get where?’ he asked once more, and this time Georgina didn’t evade the question.
    ‘Roper’s,’ she said.
    ‘So you are going?' His eyes narrowed.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I suppose I should say find your own way, then, and that anyone who goes to him deserves what she gets.’
    ‘No, he gets,' corrected Georgina.
    ‘You mean –'
    ‘Yes, I mean that, Craig. There’s simply nothing else for me to do. You said yourself there would be no jobs being offered, and I can’t, and I won’t, go back. I’m going as George Brown. He thinks I’m George Brown, so I’m that far at least, and he, Roper, won’t be back for a few weeks yet, so I could stay on until the eleventh hour, as it were.’
    ‘But if he did come before ’ Craig began.
    ‘He won’t. He said so.’
    ‘But ’
    ‘Then I’d still be all right. The cabin, my cabin, is secluded, there’s no one close. Finally, if he did discover me’ ... a little rueful grin ... ‘you must agree I’m no femme fatale .’
    ‘It’s a matter of opinion,’ Craig said gallantly.
    ‘Thank you. But you still must agree that I—well ’
    ‘I believe that you’re trying to say, among other things, that you have a boyish figure,’ he laughed.
    ‘Flat,’ she agreed.
    ‘Not in all places ... hi,