He flicked his horses: and in those five minutes the new governess made a friend for life in poor Miss Crisp the little old post-mistress. It was an unconscious conquest; indeed, she was thinking more of her employer than of anything she was saying; but this Miss Winfrey had a way of endearing herself to persons who liked being taken seriously, due perhaps to her own habit of taking herself very seriously indeed. Nevertheless, she was thinking of the squatter. He was a little rough, though less so, she thought, in his flannel shirt and wide-awake, than in the high collar and frock-coat which he had worn at their previous interview in Melbourne. On the whole she liked him well enough to wish to bring him to her way of looking at so distressing a spectacle as that of a drunken man. And it so happened that no sooner had she taken her seat beside him in the buggy than he returned of his own accord to the subject which was uppermost in her mind. "It was one of my own men, Miss Winfrey." "The man on the verandah?" "Yes. They call him Cattle-station Bill. He looks after what we call the Cattle Station--an out-station of ours where there are nothing but sheep, by the way--on the other side of the township. He has a pretty lonely life over there. It's only natural he should knock down a cheque now and again." The governess looked puzzled. "What does it mean--knocking down a cheque?" "Mean? Well, we pay everything by cheque up here, d'you see? So when a man's put in his six months' work, say, he rolls up his swag and walks in for his cheque. Twenty-six pounds it would be for the six months, less a few shillings, we'll say, for tobacco. And most of 'em take their cheque to the nearest grog shanty and drink it up in three or four days." Miss Winfrey shuddered. "And then?" "Then they come back to work for another six months." "And you take them back?" "I should think I did--when they're good men like Cattle-station Bill! It's nothing. He'll be back at his hut by the end of the week. That's an understood thing. Then in another few months he'll want another cheque. And so on, year in and year out." Miss Winfrey made no remark, but she turned her head and looked back. And the recumbent moleskins were still a white daub on the hotel verandah, for it was hereabouts that Pickering had mistaken them for the young woman's skirt. She watched them out of sight, and then she sighed. "It's terrible!" "You'll get used to it." "Never! It's too awful. One ought to do something. You must let me see what I can do, Mr. Pickering. The poor men! The poor men!" Mr. Pickering was greatly amused. He never meddled with his men. Their morals were not his concern. In the matter of their cheques his sense of responsibility ended with his signature. The cheques might come back endorsed by a publican who, he knew, must have practically stolen them from his men's pockets. But he never meddled with that publican.