Dog and man greeted us sedately, and soon Dan had a billy boiling for us,
and a blazing fire, and accepted an invitation to join us at supper and
"bring something in the way of bread along with him."
With a commonplace remark about the trip out, he placed a crisp, newly
baked damper on the tea-towel that acted as supper cloth; but when we all
agreed that he was "real slap-up at damper making," he scented a joke and
shot a quick, questioning glance around; then deciding that it was wiser
not to laugh at all than to laugh in the wrong place, he only said, he
was "not a bad hand at the damper trick." Dan liked his jokes well
labelled when dealing with the unknown Woman.
He was a bushman of the old type, one of the men of the droving days;
full of old theories, old faiths, and old prejudices, and clinging always
to old habits and methods. Year by year as the bush had receded and
shrunk before the railways, he had receded with it, keeping always just
behind the Back of Beyond, droving, bullock-punching, stock-keeping, and
unconsciously opening up the way for that very civilisation that was
driving him farther and farther back.
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