`What good'll that do?'

`Never you mind. You just do as you're told, that's all you've got to do,'
said Jack, and he went home to get dressed and bring his wife.

After the dancing started that night I had a peep in once or twice.
The first time I saw Mary dancing with Jack, and looking serious;
and the second time she was dancing with the blarsted Jackaroo dude,
and looking excited and happy. I noticed that some of the girls,
that I could see sitting on a stool along the opposite wall,
whispered, and gave Mary black looks as the Jackaroo swung her past.
It struck me pretty forcibly that I should have taken fighting lessons
from him instead of from poor Romany. I went away and walked about four miles
down the river road, getting out of the way into the Bush whenever I saw
any chap riding along. I thought of poor Romany and wondered where he was,
and thought that there wasn't much to choose between us as far as
happiness was concerned. Perhaps he was walking by himself in the Bush,
and feeling like I did. I wished I could shake hands with him.

But somehow, about half-past ten, I drifted back to the river slip-rails
and leant over them, in the shadow of the peppermint-tree,
looking at the rows of river-willows in the moonlight.
I didn't expect anything, in spite of what Jack said.

I didn't like the idea of hanging myself: I'd been with a party who found
a man hanging in the Bush, and it was no place for a woman round where he was.
And I'd helped drag two bodies out of the Cudgeegong river in a flood,
and they weren't sleeping beauties. I thought it was a pity that a chap
couldn't lie down on a grassy bank in a graceful position in the moonlight
and die just by thinking of it -- and die with his eyes and mouth shut.