There had been talk of him and Mrs. Brent when she was a girl and he little more than a boy, on the old Pipeclay diggings years ago; but he very seldom spoke to, and never of, her, and he treated her with the greatest respect. It was noticed that while other diggers gave her clothes to make and mend, he never did; but he saw that her water cask was kept filled, in dry weather, from the spring on the flat, and that a load of cut firewood was dumped at the back of the hut occasionally.
Log Paddock was nearly done, and there were fewer diggers than selectors in the vicinity. The children went to a small "provisional" school, over the ridges—where, by the way, little else than geography was provided, the teacher being well up in that branch, and no other.
Little Harry Moore went there occasionally, and was taken in strict and motherly custody, from the time he left his father's hut until he returned to it, by little Lily Brent. Mrs. Foster looked after little Harry's stomach, and the seats of his breeches, while the father was at work; and little Harry usually slept at her place while Tom was on night shift. The child knew her as "Aunty Foster" all his life, and every male in the vicinity was "uncle" to him.
Now, along about this Christmas time, Aunty Foster got another suspicion. On one or two occasions Tom thanked her for certain repairs and additions to his son's wardrobe, which she couldn't remember—wasn't responsible for, in fact; and it puzzled her vaguely, but she was past bothering over riddles. But
