"The boys! Why, they're both on the hay in the shed." He stared
at her again, shifted uneasily, crossed the other leg tightly, frowned,

blinked, and reached for the matches. "You look a bit off-colour, Mary.
It's the heat that makes us all a bit ratty at times.

Better put that by and have a swill o' oatmeal and water, and turn in."
"It's too hot to go to bed. I couldn't sleep. I'm all right.

I'll -- I'll just finish this. Just reach me a drink from the water-bag --
the pannikin's on the hob there, by your boot."

He scratched his head helplessly, and reached for the drink.
When he sat down again, he felt strangelyrestless. "Like a hen that

didn't know where to lay," he put it. He couldn't settle down or keep still,
and didn't seem to enjoy his pipe somehow. He rubbed his head again.

"There's a thunderstorm comin'," he said. "That's what it is;
and the sooner it comes the better."

He went to the back door, and stared at the blackness to the east,
and, sure enough, lightning was blinking there.

"It's coming, sure enough; just hang out and keep cool for another hour,
and you'll feel the difference."

He sat down again on the three-legged stool, folded his arms, with his elbows
on his knees, drew a long breath, and blinked at the clay floor for a while;

then he twisted the stool round on one leg, until he faced
the old-fashioned spired wooden clock (the brass disc of the pendulum

moving ghost-like through a scarred and scratched marine scene
-- Margate in England -- on the glass that covered the lower half)

that stood alone on the slab shelf over the fireplace. The hands indicated
half-past two, and Johnny, who had studied that clock and could "hit the time

nigh enough by it," after knitting his brows and blinking at the dial
for a full minute by its own hand, decided "that it must be getting on

toward nine o'clock."
It must have been the heat. Johnny stood up, raking his hair,

turned to the door and back again, and then, after an
impatient gesture, took up his fiddle and raised it to his shoulder.

Then the queer thing happened. He said afterwards, under conditions
favourable to such sentimental confidence, that a cold hand seemed to take

hold of the bow, through his, and -- anyway, before he knew what he was about
he had played the first bars of "When First I Met Sweet Peggy",

a tune he had played often, twenty years before, in his courting days,
and had never happened to play since. He sawed it right through

(the cold hand left after the first bar or two) standing up;
then still stood with fiddle and bow trembling in his hands,

with the queer feeling still on him, and a rush of old thoughts
going through his head, all of which he set down afterwards

to the effect of the heat. He put the fiddle away hastily,
damning the bridge of it at the same time in loud but hurried tones,

with the idea of covering any eccentricity which the wife might have noticed
in his actions. "Must 'a' got a touch o' sun," he muttered to himself.

He sat down, fumbled with knife, pipe, and tobacco, and presently stole
a furtive glance over his shoulder at his wife.

The washed-out little woman was still sewing, but stitching blindly,
for great tears were rolling down her worn cheeks.

Johnny, white-faced on account of the heat, stood close behind her,
one hand on her shoulder and the other clenched on the table;

but the clenched hand shook as badly as the loose one.
"Good God! What is the matter, Mary? You're sick!" (They had had

little or no experience of illness.) "Tell me, Mary -- come now!
Has the boys been up to anything?"

"No, Johnny; it's not that."
"What is it then? You're taken sick! What have you been doing with yourself?

It might be fever. Hold up a minute. You wait here quiet
while I roost out the boys and send 'em for the doctor and someone ----"

"No! no! I'm not sick, John. It's only a turn. I'll be all right
in a minute."

He shifted his hand to her head, which she dropped suddenly,
with a life-weary sigh, against his side.

"Now then!" cried Johnny, wildly, "don't you faint or go
into disterricks, Mary! It'll upset the boys; think of the boys!

It's only the heat -- you're only takin' queer."
"It's not that; you ought to know me better than that. It was -- I -- Johnny,

I was only thinking -- we've been married twenty years to-night
-- an' -- it's New Year's Night!"

"And I've never thought of it!" said Johnny (in the afterwards).
"Shows what a God-forgotten selection will make of a man.

She'd thought of it all the time, and was waiting for it to strike me.
Why! I'd agreed to go and play at a darnce at Old Pipeclay School-house

all night -- that very night -- and leave her at home because she hadn't
asked to come; and it never struck me to ask her -- at home by herself

in that hole -- for twenty-five bob. And I only stopped at home
because I'd got the hump, and knew they'd want me bad at the school."

They sat close together on the long stool by the table,
shy and awkward at first; and she clung to him at opening of thunder,

and they started apart guiltily when the first great drops
sounded like footsteps on the gravel outside, just as they'd done

one night-time before -- twenty years before.
If it was dark before, it was black now. The edge of the awful storm-cloud

rushed up and under the original darkness like the best "drop"
black-brushed over the cheap "lamp" variety, turning it grey by contrast.

The deluge lasted only a quarter of an hour; but it cleared the night,
and did its work. There was hail before it, too -- big as emu eggs,

the boys said -- that lay feet deep in the old diggers' holes on Pipeclay
for days afterwards -- weeks some said.

The two sweethearts of twenty years ago and to-night watched
the retreat of the storm, and, seeing Mount Buckaroo standing clear,

they went to the back door, which opened opposite the end of the shed,
and saw to the east a glorious arch of steel-blue, starry sky,

with the distant peaks showing clear and blue away back under
the far-away stars in the depth of it.

They lingered awhile -- arms round each other's waists --
before she called the boys, just as they had done this time of night

twenty years ago, after the boys' grandmother had called her.
"Awlright, mother!" bawled back the boys, with unfilial independence

of Australian youth. "We're awlright! We'll be in directly!
Wasn't it a pelterer, mother?"

They went in and sat down again. The embarrassment began to wear off.
"We'll get out of this, Mary," said Johnny. "I'll take Mason's offer

for the cattle and things, and take that job of Dawson's, boss or no boss"
-- (Johnny's bad luck was due to his inability in the past

to "get on" with any boss for any reasonable length of time) --
"I can get the boys on, too. They're doing no good here,

and growing up. It ain't doing justice to them; and, what's more,
this life is killin' you, Mary. That settles it! I was blind.

Let the jumpt-up selection go! It's making a wall-eyed bullock of me, Mary --
a dry-rotted rag of a wall-eyed bullock like Jimmy Nowlett's old Strawberry.

And you'll live in town like a lady."
"Somebody coming!" yelled the boys.

There was a clatter of sliprails hurriedly thrown down,
and clipped by horses' hoofs.

"Insoide there! Is that you, Johnny?"
"Yes!" ("I knew they'd come for you," said Mrs. Mears to Johnny.)

"You'll have to come, Johnny. There's no get out of it.
Here's Jim Mason with me, and we've got orders to stun you and pack you

if you show fight. The blessedfiddler from Mudgee didn't turn up.
Dave Regan burst his concertina, and they're in a fix."

"But I can't leave the missus."
"That's all right. We've got the school missus's mare and side-saddle.

She says you ought to be jolly well ashamed of yourself, Johnny Mears,
for not bringing your wife on New Year's Night. And so you ought!"

Johnny did not look shame-faced, for reasons unknown to them.