Page:The Toll of the Bush.pdf/84

‘He can talk all right,’ Sandy said with unwilling admiration; ‘but the moral didn’t seem to hang to his little story too well. ‘What do you think of him?’ he asked, turning to Geoffrey.

‘It seems impossible to doubt his sincerity,’ was the reply.

Mr. Fletcher was now addressing the Maoris in their own language, and the crowd on the hillside, as though ashamed of the temporary seriousness into which they had been cajoled, resumed their original levity of manner.

‘There are some fairly hard nuts for the parson to crack down there,’ Sandy said. ‘That’s Hogg, the storekeeper, talking to the half-caste girl, and she’s a Miss Wayte from up the river. There are seven girls in that family and they’ve all had to stick to their name. Some people think Hogg’s going to marry her, but they’ve thought things like that about Hogg for the last twenty years. That’s Howell, the shoemaker, pretty well in, they say, and tight as wax. His brother keeps the pub, the two-storey building beyond there. Most of the young men are from the coast settlement—you can see their horses in Howell’s paddock. They work like furies all the week, real hard graft, mostly bush-falling, and on Sundays they get their horses and ride them backwards or sideways or any other way the fancy takes them, and tumble off here on to the sand and look at the girls.’

‘And what about the girls?’

‘The girls look at them and ask one another their names, and say, “Oh, do look!” and “Isn't he good-looking?” and “I wish I knew him.”’

‘And then———’