The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Colonial Reformer, Vol. I (of 3), by Rolf Boldrewood

Note: The table of contents has been added by the transcriber.

[CHAPTER I]
[CHAPTER II]
[CHAPTER III]
[CHAPTER IV]
[CHAPTER V]
[CHAPTER VI]
[CHAPTER VII]
[CHAPTER VIII]
[CHAPTER IX]
[CHAPTER X]
[CHAPTER XI]
[CHAPTER XII]
[CHAPTER XIII]
[CHAPTER XIV]

A COLONIAL REFORMER

A
COLONIAL REFORMER

BY
ROLF BOLDREWOOD
AUTHOR OF ‘ROBBERY UNDER ARMS,’ ‘THE SQUATTER’S DREAM,’
‘THE MINER’S RIGHT,’ ETC.

IN THREE VOLUMES

VOL. I

London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND NEW YORK
1890

All rights reserved

[CHAPTER I]

When Mr. Ernest Neuchamp, younger, of Neuchampstead, Bucks, quitted the ancient roof-tree of his race, for a deliberate conflict with fortune, in a far land, he carried with him a purpose which went far to neutralise doubt and depression.

A crusader rather than a colonist, his lofty aims embraced far more than the ordinary sordid struggle with unkind nature, with reluctant success. Such might be befitting aspirations for eager and rude adventurers, half speculators, half buccaneers. They might fitly strive and drive—bargain and save—gamble, overreach, overwork themselves and one another, as he doubted not all colonists did in their proverbially hurried, feverish lives. But for a Neuchamp, of Neuchampstead, was reserved more chivalric exertion—a loftier destiny. As his ancestors had devoted themselves (with more energy than discretion, said tradition) to the refinement and elevation of the Anglo-Saxons—when first the banner of Tancred of Neuchamp floated over the Buckinghamshire meadows—so would his lineal descendant diffuse ‘sweetness and light’ among a vigorous but necessarily uncultured community, emerging from his unselfish toil, after a few years, with a modest competency, and the reputation of an Australian Manco Capac of the south.

Ernest Neuchamp fully endorsed the dictum that ‘colonisation was heroic work.’ He superadded to this assent a conviction that he was among the heroes destined to leave a glorious memory in the annals of the colony which he intended to honour.

For the somewhat exceptional though not obsolete character of reformer, he was fitted by natural tendency, derived probably from hereditary predisposition. The Neuchamps had always been leading and staunch reformers, from a period whence ‘the memory of man goeth not to the contrary.’ Of Merrie England they would have secured a much larger slice had they not been, after Hastings, more deeply concerned in inflicting reforms upon the stubborn or despondent Saxons than in hunting after manorial privileges with a view to extension of territory. Even in Normandy, old chroniclers averred that Balder-Ragnaiök, nicknamed Wünsche (or the wisher), who married the heiress of Neuchamp, and founded the family, converted a fair estate into a facsimile of a Norse grazing farm, maddening the peasantry, and strengthening his natural enemies by an everlasting tutelage as exasperating towards others as fascinating to himself.

Mr. Courtenay Neuchamp, who inherited, in happier times, the ancestral hall, in Buckinghamshire, was an easy-going man of the world, combining a shrewd outlook upon his own affairs with the most perfect indifference as to how his neighbours managed theirs. He was a better man of business than Ernest, though he had not a tittle of his energy or fiery abstract zeal. So far from giving credit to his ancestors, and their spirited efforts, he bewailed their misdirected energies.

‘They were a lot of narrow-minded busybodies,’ he would often remark, ‘incapable of managing their own affairs with decent success, and what little power they ever possessed they devoted to the annoyance of their neighbours, people probably much wiser than themselves.’

‘They had noble aims, to which they gave their lives,’ Ernest would reply; ‘I reverence their memories deeply, fervently, more—a hundredfold—than if they had left us the largest manor in the county, amassed by greed and selfishness.’

‘So don’t I; nothing can be more disgraceful than to see the representatives of the oldest family in the shire (for these Tudors are of yesterday) possessed only of an estate of less acreage than a tenant-farmer tills, with an inconvenient old rookery, hardly good enough for the said tenant-farmer to live in. I wish I had lived a few centuries earlier.’

‘You would have enlarged our borders,’ said the younger son, ‘but at what a cost! We boast a long roll of stainless ancestors, each of whom was true to his God, to his king, to his plighted word, and who called no man his master, save his anointed sovereign. You would have been cursed with an unhappy posterity of spendthrifts, profligates, oppressors of the poor or trucklers to the rich.’

‘Gra’ mercy! as we used to say, for thy prophecies and predictions. I see no necessity for vice being necessarily allied to success in life. I believe sometimes it is rather the other way. But you were always headstrong; slave to imagination, that misleader of humanity. Go on your own path, and you may convert all the Papuans, Australians, New Zealanders, or whatever they are, that you are going to waste your life among, if you have sufficient breathing time before you are roasted.’

‘I am going to New South Wales, in Australia, where they don’t roast people any more than in Bucks. But you will never read up on any subject.’

‘Why the deuce should I?’ demanded the senior. ‘What earthly benefit can I derive from the manners and customs of foreign savages. We have them of our own and to spare. If thereby I could persuade these pig-headed tenants of ours to farm in a more enlightened way, and pay interest on capital advanced for their benefit, or learn how to get old Sir Giles Windereach to sell us back that corner his father bought of Slacklyne Neuchamp, I wouldn’t mind. Why else should I read beastly dry books?’

‘Because you would learn to take an interest in your kind, and might then propose to yourself the healthful task of trying to improve them.’

‘But,’ said Courtenay, rather disrespectfully, ‘why should I improve those classes, from which as a land-owner and very minor capitalist, I find it hard enough to defend my property as it is? Go and test a grocer in arithmetic, you will find him the more accurate man, and the readier. Try a labourer at his own cart, and see how he is at once your superior. Depend upon it, all this upheaval of lower social strata is bad. Some day we may find that we have freed internal fires and exploded social volcanoes.’

‘I shall make the attempt where I am going, however,’ said Ernest with decision. ‘It may be that there are peculiar advantages in a new land, and a sparse population, without the crushing vested interests which weigh one to the dust in the old world.’

‘Perhaps you may gather some of the dust of the new, which is gold, they say, if they don’t lie, as most probably they do. Then you can rear an Australian Neuchampstead, which will be the third, under such conditions, built by our family, if old records are true. I wish you were taking more capital with you, old fellow, though.’

Here the elder man slightly relaxed the cold undemonstrative regard which his aquiline features usually wore, as he gazed for a few moments upon the ardent expressive face of the cadet of his house. ‘It’s another of the family faults that we can neither stay decently together at home, nor fit out our knights-errant worthily for the crusade.’

‘My dear Courtenay,’ said the younger son, touched to the depth of a delicate and sensitive nature by the rare concession of the head of the house, ‘things are best as they are. You have enough which you require. I have not enough, which is an equal necessity of my nature. I should die here like a falcon in a corn-chandler’s shop, pining for the sweep of her long wings against the sea-cliff, where with wave and tempest she could scream in concert. Hope and adventure are my life, the breath of my nostrils, and forth I must go.’

‘Well, my blessing go with you, Ernest; I neither mistrust your courage nor capacity, and in any land you will probably hold your own. But I should have more confidence in your success if you had less of that infernal Neuchamp taste for managing other people’s affairs.’

‘But, my dear Courtenay, is it not the part of a true knight and a Christian man to lead others into the right path? We thankfully accept it from others. I think of the many needs of a new land, and of the rude dwellers therein.’

‘I hate to be put right—colonists may be of the same opinion. You never can be induced to do anything that is suggested by another, or any Neuchamp, that I ever heard of.’

‘Because we take particular care to be identified with the latest, and most successful practice in all respects.’

‘Because we are always right, I suppose. A comfortable theory, but of which the public cannot always be convinced. I never try to convince them—I merely wish to be left alone. That is where I differ from you.’

‘You will never gain, however, by your principles, Courtenay.’

‘You will lose your fortune by following out yours, Ernest.’

The conversation having ended, as had nearly all previous discussions between the brothers, in each adhering steadfastly to his own opinion, Ernest went his own way with the cheerful obstinacy of his character. He selected a ship and a colony. He ordered a large, comprehensive, and comparatively useless outfit. He purchased several books of fact and fiction, bearing upon the land of his adoption, for reading upon the voyage, and girding himself up, he finally completed all necessary arrangements. He bade farewell to the old home—to the villagers, whom he had known from boyhood—and to his friends and kinsfolk. He did then actually set sail in the clipper-ship St. Swithin, comforting himself with heroic parallels of all ages and all shades of maritime adventure.

On the voyage out, he made acquaintance with several agreeable people. Of these, many were, like himself, sailing to Australia for the first time. Others were returning to the great south land, where they had probably spent their early years, or indeed been born. Among these, though he was not aware of the fact, since they did not advertise it, was a family named Middleton, consisting of a father, mother, and two daughters. These last were quiet and well-mannered, but decidedly amusing. Alice Middleton was handsome and lively; Barbara was rather staid, given to reading, and did not talk much, except with congenial people. She, however, could speak very much to the point, should such speaking be needed. With this family Mr. Neuchamp became on sufficiently intimate terms to confide his views upon colonial life, including his hopes of benefiting the citizens of his adopted country by the inculcation of the newest English ideas in farming and other important subjects. He did not find that readiness of response which he had looked for. This puzzled and slightly annoyed him, as from their intelligent sympathy in other matters he had confidently reckoned upon their co-operation. Indeed he had discovered the second Miss Middleton in the act of smiling, as if at his enthusiasm; while the matron, a shrewd, observant person, went the length of inquiring whether he did not think it would be better to see something of the country, before settling the affairs of its inhabitants.

‘My dear Mrs. Middleton,’ replied Mr. Neuchamp with grave dissent, ‘I regret that I cannot see the force of your position. My feeling is that one is far more certain to criticise fairly and dispassionately a new land and a new state of society, while one’s impressions are sharply and freshly defined. Afterwards, the finer lines are effaced by use, wont, and local prejudice. No! depend upon it, the newly-arrived observer has many advantages.’

‘Then you do not think it possible,’ said Alice Middleton, ‘that the new—arrival should make any mistakes in his inspection of the unlucky colonists?’

‘If he has cultivated his power of observation, and his critical faculty, so that he can trust himself to be just and impartial, I do not see that it matters whether he may have lived one year or ten in any given country.’

‘You will find that it does matter,’ retorted his fair antagonist, ‘unless you are different from every other Englishman we have ever seen.’

‘Why, have you lived in Australia?’ inquired he with accents of extreme surprise. ‘I had no idea of the fact.’

‘We have been there all our lives,’ said Barbara Middleton, ‘excepting for the last three years. Why should you think we had not been there?’

‘I—really—don’t know,’ protested Mr. Neuchamp, now discovering suddenly that he was on unsafe ground. ‘I thought you were English, and making the voyage, like myself, for the first time.’

‘Don’t apologise,’ laughed Alice; ‘you may as well say at once that you thought we were too much like ordinary English people to be colonists,’ and she made him a slight bow.

‘Well, so I did,’ confessed our hero, too honest to evade the expression of his opinions. ‘But you know, you’re so—well—you do expect a little difference in appearance, or manner——’

‘Or complexion?’ continued his fair tormentor. ‘Did you think Australians were—just a little—dark?’

‘I recant, and apologise, and sue for pardon,’ said Ernest, now completely dislodged from his pedestal, a horrid thought obtruding itself that similar discoveries would narrow his mission to most uninteresting dimensions.

This ‘check to his queen’ sobered Mr. Neuchamp for several days. He began to question the probability of influencing society in Australia to any great extent, if the component parts were like the Middleton family. However, he reflected that people of cultivated tastes and unexceptionable manners were rare in any country. And when he thought of the vast interior with its scattered untravelled population, hope revived and he again saw himself the ‘guide, philosopher, and friend of a guileless and grateful people.’

There were several landed proprietors who held great possessions in Australia among the passengers, with whom he made a point of conversing whenever such conversation was possible. But here again unexpected hindrances and obstacles arose.

Mr. Neuchamp found that these returning Australians were rather reserved, and had very little to say about the land in which so large a portion of their lives had been passed. They committed themselves to the extent of stating in answer to his numerous inquiries, that it was a ‘very fair sort of place—you could manage to live there.’ ‘As to the people?’ ‘Well, they were much like people everywhere else—some good, some bad.’ ‘Climate?‘ ‘Hot in some places, cold in others.’ ‘Manners?’‘Well, many of the inhabitants hadn’t any, but that was a complaint almost universal at the present day.’ The oppressed colonist generally wound up by stating that when he, Neuchamp, had been in Australia for a year or two, he would know all about it.

All this was very unsatisfactory. As far as these pieces of evidence went, the terra incognita to which, after such rending of ancient associations and family ties, he was even now voyaging, was as prosaic as Middlesex or Kent. These people either did not know anything about their own country or their own people, or, with the absurd indifferentism of Englishmen, did not care. He was partly reassured by one of the more youthful passengers, who had not been very long away from his Australian birthland. He considerately raised Ernest’s spirits, and his estimate of Australia as a ‘wonderland,’ by certain historiettes and tales of adventure by flood and field. But when he introduced Indians, habitual scalping, and a serpent fifty feet long, Mr. Neuchamp’s course of reading enabled him to detect the unprincipled fabrication, and to withdraw with dignity.

In due course of time, the vessel which carried Mr. Neuchamp and his purpose arrived at her destination. The night was misty, so that he had no opportunity of comparing the harbour of Sydney with the numerous descriptions which he had read. He was met on the wharf by the perfectly British inquiry of ‘Cab, sir, cab?’ upon replying to which in the affirmative, he was rattled up to the Royal Hotel, and charged double fare, with a completeness and despatch upon which even a Shoreditch Station cabby could not have improved.

Having renovated himself with a bath and breakfast, Mr. Neuchamp proceeded to view the component parts of the busy street from the balcony of the great caravanserai. On the whole, he did not see any striking departure from the appearance of an ordinary London thoroughfare. There were omnibuses raking the whole length of the street, fore and aft, as it were, well horsed with upstanding powerful animals; the drivers, too, had something of the misanthropical air which the true ‘busman always acquires after a certain period. Hansoms rattled about, with the express-train flavour peculiar to that luxurious vehicle for the unencumbered. Well-appointed carriages, from which descended fashionably attired dames and damsels, drew up at imposing haberdashers for a little early and quiet shopping. The foot passengers did not look as if they were likely to contribute to any Arabian Nights entertainment either. They wore chiefly black coats, I grieve to say black hats, and serious countenances, exactly like the mercantile and legal sections of the city men in London. The labourers wore the same shoddy suits, the sailors the same loose or inexplicable tightened garments, the postmen the same red coat, the shabby-genteel people the same threadbare ditto; even the blind man, with a barrel-organ, had the same reflectoral expression that he had often noticed. All the types were identical with those he had hoped to have left ten thousand miles away. Certainly he did see occasionally a sauntering squatter, bronzed, bearded, and insouciant; but he, again, was so near akin to a country gentleman who had taken a run to town, or a stray soldier on leave, that he was upon the point of exclaiming, ‘How disgustingly English!’ when a slight incident turned his thoughts to the far and wondrous interior. Down the street, on a grand-looking young horse, at a pace more suggestive of stretching out through endless forest-parks than of riding with propriety through a narrow and crowded thoroughfare, came a born bushman. He was a tall man, wearing a wide-leaved felt hat and a careless rig generally, such as suggested to Mr. Neuchamp the denizen of the waste, whom he had hungered and thirsted to see. Here he was in the flesh evidently, and Ernest drank in with greedy eyes his swarthy complexion, his erect yet easy seat on his horse. However, just as he was passing the hotel, whether the gallant nomad was looking another way, or whether he had considered the hour, early as it was, not unsuitable for refreshment, the fact must here be stated that the colt, observing some triumph of civilisation for the first time (a human advertising sandwich), stopped with deathlike suddenness; his rider was shot on to the crown of his head with startling force. Mr. Neuchamp was preparing to rush downstairs to the rescue, when a quietly attired passer-by stepped up to the snorting colt and, with a gentle adroitness that told of use and wont, secured and soothed him. The gallant bushman arose, looking half-stunned; then, gazing ruefully at the crown of his sombrero, he felt the top of his head somewhat distrustfully, and with a word of thanks to the stranger, who held the rein in a peculiar manner till he was safe in the saddle, mounted and pursued his way after a swift but guarded fashion. ‘My word, sir,’ was his single remark, ‘I didn’t think he’d ha’ propped like that—thank you all the same.’

Inspirited by this incident as showing a possibility of lights and shadows even upon this too English foreground, Mr. Neuchamp thought that he would deliver one of his letters of introduction to a merchant, whose advice he had been specially recommended to take in the purchase of land, or of whatever property he should select for investment.

CHAPTER II

When the past is reviewed, and the clear sad lamp of experience sheds its soft gleam upon the devious track, then are all apparent the scarce shunned precipices, the hidden pitfalls, the bones of long dead victims. Then can we measure the tender patience with which our guardian angel warned or wooed into safety.

Here, where we loitered all heedless, flower-crowned, and wine-flushed, languished the serpent syren, heavenly fair, but deadliest of all. We had been surely sped. But an idle impulse, the tone of a passing melody, led to change of purpose, of route, and we stood scatheless anon, having tripped lightly among deaths as sudden and shattering as the lighted explosive.

At the diverging roads, where dumb and scornful sat the sphinx of our destiny, while we lightly glanced at the path whence none return, save in such guise that death were dearer, why did our heedless footsteps cling all instinctively to the narrow, the thrice blessed way?

And yet again, in the dark hour when we should have been watchful as the mariner on an unknown shore, who casts the lead over every foot of the passage through which his barque seems so easily gliding, how was our careless pride brought low, how sudden was the sorrow, how dreary the bondage, till we were ransomed from the dungeon of the pitiless one. From what endless weeping would not, alas, a dim knowledge and recognition of the first false step have saved us!

Such a false step Mr. Neuchamp was nigh upon adopting, with all its train of evil consequences. At the mid-day table d’hôte at the Royal Hotel, sufficiently welcome to him after the weary main, sat a florid, good-looking, smiling, middle-aged man, evidently a gentleman, and not less surely connected with the country division. He happened, apparently by chance, to be seated next to Ernest, who was immediately attracted by his bonhomie, his humorous epigrammatic talk, joined to the outward signs and tokens of the man of the world.

‘You have not been very long in this part of the country?’ said the agreeable stranger.

Ernest slightly coloured as he replied, ‘I certainly have not; but I confess I don’t see why I should be affiché as a new and inexperienced traveller. You and I are dressed much alike, after all,’ added he, glancing at the other’s well-cut travelling suit of rough tweed and the black hat which hung beside his own upon the pegs provided for lunch-consuming visitors.

‘True, quite true,’ agreed his new acquaintance; ‘and it is not, perhaps, good manners to remark upon a gentleman as a species of foreign novelty. I remember a few years since chafing at it myself. But my heart warms to an Englishman of a certain sort. And we Australians learn to know the Britisher by all manner of slight signs, including a fresh complexion. I really believe, if you will pardon my rudeness in guessing, that you come from near my own county?’

Ernest explained the locality of Neuchampstead, upon which the affable stranger rose and shook him violently with both hands, exclaiming, ‘I could have sworn it. Our people have been friends for ages. I come from just over the border. You’ve heard of the Selmores, of Saleham?’ mentioning county people well known by name to Ernest.

‘Now this is very delightful,’ said his new friend, after all explanations had been made, ‘and I shall take charge of you without any scruple. You had better change your quarters to the New Holland Club. I can have you admitted as an honorary member without a day’s delay. I am a member; but I came here to-day to meet a friend, and have done so most unexpectedly, eh, my dear Neuchamp?’

So irresistible was Mr. Selmore, that Ernest felt absolutely carried away by the stream of his decided manner, his good stories, his pleasant sarcasms, his foreign reminiscences, and his racy description of Australian bush-life (he owned several stations, it would seem, himself). So it was natural that after a bottle of hock, of a rare vintage, ordered in honour of their auspicious meeting, that he should confide to Mr. Selmore his plans of life, his leading ideas, and the amount of capital which he was free to invest in some description of landed property.

After they had compressed more droll, confidential, and semi-practical talk into a couple of hours than would have served for a week on board ship, Mr. Selmore proposed a stroll down the street towards the public gardens, which he thought his young friend would find novel and interesting.

As they lounged down the principal street Ernest was struck with the change in the appearance of the crowd which thronged one side of the footway, between the bisecting cross-streets. The hard and anxious faces of the world’s workers which had filled the pavement in the morning had vanished, and in their stead were the flowerets of fashion, the gilded youth of the land, the butterflies of society, the fair faces of daintily attired girls, the unworn features of those ornamental human types which comprise no toilers, whatever may be the proportion of spinsters.

Mr. Neuchamp, whose sensitive organisation was still more highly attuned by the voyage, gazed with much interest upon this novel presentment. Again he could not help asking himself, ‘Have I really left Britain? Is this a colony, or a magically sliced-off section of London life? The swells are identical to the turn of a moustache, or the set of a collar. That girl’s bonnet has not been two months from Paris, for I saw the fellow of it, which had only that day arrived, on Cousin Amy’s head the week I left home. Allah is great! Have I come to reform these people? However, this is only the city. All cities are alike, except, perhaps, Tangiers and Philadelphia. Wait till I get fairly into the bush!’

Thus, looking with pleased eyes and wondering mind, Mr. Neuchamp hardly noticed that his companion, as he swaggered easily along, seemed to know and be known of every one. He, however, did not care to stop to speak to his numerous friends. As they passed on, some of them, Ernest commenced to observe, regarded Mr. Selmore and himself with an amused expression. Keenly alive to colonial criticism, though proposing to pour so many vials of the British article upon the heads of these unsuspecting Arcadians, he noted more closely the manner and bearing of the still undiminished number of the ‘friends of his friend’ whom they encountered. It might have been fancy, but he thought that he saw a keen glance, in some instances not altogether of mirth, bestowed upon himself.

They had reached a side street, along which they passed, when three young men, irreproachably attired for the ante-prandial stroll, blocked the way.

‘Where are you off to in such a hurry, you old humbug?’ said a tall handsome man imperiously. ‘You can’t have any business at this time of day.’

‘Not so sure of that,’ chimed in another of the party. ‘I see you’ve got your black hat with you, Selmore.’

Mr. Selmore looked straight into the speaker’s eyes for a moment, and then gravely taking off the upper covering referred to, stroked it, looked at it, and replaced it upon his head.

‘Yes!’ he said, ‘Evelyn, I have; I prefer them, even in this confounded weather. They make a fellow look like a gentleman if it’s in him, and not like a man going to a dog-fight, like that white abomination you have on.’

The trio laughed more heartily and continuously at this rejoinder than Ernest thought the wit justified, to the enjoyment of which Mr. Selmore abandoned them without ceremony, merely remarking to Ernest, though good fellows, they were awfully dissipated, and he could not recommend them as friends.

Before quitting the business part of the city, where the handsome massive stone buildings gave an Italian air to the narrow streets, Ernest’s roving eye happened to light on the name of ‘Frankston,’ legended upon a conspicuously bright brass plate.

‘Ha!’ said he, ‘I remember something about that name. Is he a merchant—do you know him?’

‘Yes,’ said Mr. Selmore indifferently, ‘he is a merchant, and a tolerably sharp man of business too. Takes station accounts; but I forget, you don’t quite understand our phrases yet. He would be called more a private banker where you and I hail from. Why do you ask?’

‘Merely because I happen to have a letter of introduction to him from a man I met abroad once, and I shall deliver it to-morrow.’

Mr. Selmore did not look sympathetic at this announcement, but he said little in contravention of his young friend’s resolve.

‘You must keep your weather eye open, if he gets you out to that pretty place of his, Neuchamp, or you will find yourself saddled with a big station and a tight mortgage before you can look round you.’

Ernest had more than once thought himself extremely fortunate in meeting with Mr. Selmore at so early a period of his colonial career. Now he was confirmed in that opinion.

‘My dear sir, I shall be more than cautious in any dealings with him, I assure you,’ he said warmly. ‘Are these the public gardens? How different from anything I have seen before, and how surpassingly beautiful!’

They roamed long amid the glories of that semi-tropical park, rich with the spoils of the Orient and many a fairy isle of the Great South Sea. As the palms and strangely formed forest trees waved in the breeze fresh from a thousand leagues of ocean foam, as the blue waters glanced and sparkled through the clustering foliage, while they sat under giant pines and looked over the sea-wall and at the white-winged sailing boats flitting over the wavelets of the ocean-lake which men call the harbour of Sydney, Mr. Neuchamp freely acknowledged his wonder and his admiration. Stronger than ever was his faith in the destiny of a people with whom he was fixed in determination henceforth to cast in his lot.

Mr. Selmore had obtained his consent to dine with him at a well-known café, and thither, after visiting the baths, as the short twilight was deepening into night, they wended their way.

Upon entering the room the appearance of an extremely well-arranged dinner service was pleasant enough to view, after the somewhat less ornamental garniture of the table of a clipper-ship.

Ernest was introduced to two other friends of Mr. Selmore, also of the pastoral persuasion, and who looked as if town visiting was the exception in their rule of life.

The dinner passed off very pleasantly. The menu was well chosen, the cooking more than respectable, the wines unimpeachable. Ernest was sober from habit and principle. It would have been vain to have made the attempt to induce him to exceed. Still, with all reasonable moderation, it must be confessed that a man takes a more hopeful view of life after a good dinner, more especially in the days of joyous youth.

Mr. Selmore’s friends were up-country dwellers, and it appeared that they were, in some sort, neighbours of his when at home. Much of the conversation insensibly took the direction of stock-farming, and Mr. Neuchamp found himself listening to tales of crossing flooded rivers with droves bound for a high market, or of tens of thousands of sheep bought and sold in a day, or the wonderful price of wool, while intermingled were descriptions of feats of horsemanship varied with an occasional encounter with wild blacks.

In the midst of all this, Mr. Neuchamp’s ardour kindled to such a pitch that he could not forbear asking one of the last arrived strangers whether there was not any station for sale in their district that would be suitable for him.

One of the pastorals looked at the other in astonishment, when they both looked reproachfully at Mr. Selmore.

‘You don’t mean to say,’ at length broke out the older man, whose assiduity to the bottle had been unabated, ‘that you haven’t told our young friend here that Gammon Downs is for sale, ’pon my soul it’s too bad!’

‘Why, it’s the very place in the whole blessed colony,’ said the other, ‘for a new arrival—good water, good sheep, a nice handy little run, and the best house in the district.’

Mr. Neuchamp was so struck with the expressive and interrogatory looks of the two bush residents, that he bent a searching look upon Mr. Selmore, as if he had in some mysterious way been ill-treated by the withholding of confidence.

‘Well,’ at length spoke out that gentleman, with an air of manly frankness, ‘you know me too well to think that I should propose to sell one of my own runs to a friend, comparatively inexperienced, of course, though well up in English farming, on the very first day I had met him. There are people, of course, who would do this, and more—but Hartley Selmore is not one of that sort.’

‘But it does seem a shame,’ said the grizzled squatter, filling his glass, ‘that if you have one of the best runs in the country, that you should refuse to sell it to this gentleman merely because he is a personal friend.’

‘Thank you,’ said Ernest warmly, ‘you have interpreted my sentiments admirably. If this estate, or station, would be so suitable, why should we not come to terms about it like any one else?’

‘So remarkably cheap too,’ said the other man; ‘but I suppose Selmore wants a lot of cash down.’

‘I have only five thousand pounds,’ said Mr. Neuchamp, ‘and perhaps your property is far above that limit.’

‘It is less than I thought of taking,’ said Mr. Selmore thoughtfully; ‘but, yes; I don’t mind arranging for bills, at one and two years, which, of course, if you bought, could be easily paid out of the profits of the station. But pass the claret, we won’t talk any more shop to-night. Just so far that my friends, who live near my place, are going up the day after to-morrow. They will be glad of your company, and will show you the wonders of the bush, including Gammon Downs. You can then, my dear Neuchamp, judge for yourself.’

This plan appearing to Ernest to combine the utmost liberality on the part of the vendor with special advantages to the purchaser, who could have abundant time to examine and deliberate about his investment, was promptly acceded to.

He departed at the close of the evening to the hotel, at which place he had decided to stay, notwithstanding the tempting offer of a club bedroom. Ernest Neuchamp was not minded to give up his habits of observation, and for the exercise of his pursuit he deemed the hostelry of the period more favourable than any modern club.

Human nature is so constituted that a project feasible, favourable, and merely needing the very smallest propulsion into action over night wears a changed aspect with the dawn. As Mr. Neuchamp regained his suspended senses in a hot and mosquito-raided upper chamber in the Royal, the idea of becoming at a plunge the proprietor of Gammon Downs showed less alluring than over the joyous claret-illumined board of yester eve. What if the name (given by the rude pioneers, it had been explained to him from some nonsensical circumstance) should be only too correct a designation for a delusive investment? What if Mr. Selmore were a little too obliging, confidential, and considerate for a true and generous vendor? What if his companions, who certainly appreciated the claret, were likely from friendship or interest to be leagued against the stranger? It behoved him to be careful. The slender resources of Neuchampstead had been strained to their utmost to supplement his younger brother’s portion. Were this lost he could never regain his position. And though with the recklessness of a sanguine temperament, he would, without much regret, have addressed himself to the task of carving out a fortune with his own right hand in this land of promise, still he fully recognised the vast difference between a capital even of moderate amount and none at all.

Throwing on a few clothes hastily, he strolled off towards the baths, and after a leisurely swim in the cool translucent wave, he found his appetite for breakfast improved and his mental vision obviously cleared. He arrived at divers and various wise resolutions; and one of them was to call upon Mr. Frankston, the merchant. Two heads are better than one, decided Mr. Neuchamp sapiently, and Granville said that this old gentleman’s head was an exceedingly good one, nearly, but not quite, as good as his heart.

Discovering with some difficulty the precise street, almost a lane, where he had suddenly descried the well-remembered name, he walked into this office about half-past ten o’clock, and inquired for the head of the house. The clerk civilly motioned him to a chair, telling him that Mr. Frankston was engaged, but would not probably be long, as the gentleman with him was Captain Carryall, in an awful hurry to put to sea.

In rather less than five minutes the door opened suddenly, emitting a loud burst of laughter, and a tall sun-tanned man in a frock-coat, whose bold bright eyes were dancing again with fun and covert enjoyment of an apparently very keen jest.

As more than one anxious-looking person had passed into the outer office, Ernest walked in, and found himself in the presence of a stoutish old gentleman, with a high-coloured, clean-shaved countenance, who was chuckling with great relish, and subsiding from an exhausting fit of merriment. His white waistcoat predominated much over his clothing generally, giving that colour, with the aid of a spotless domain of shirt-collar and shirt-front, an unfair advantage over his sad-coloured suit of gray tweed.

‘Good-morning to you, sir,—won’t you take a chair,’ said the old gentleman with much civility. ‘Very rude to be laughing in the face of a visitor. But that Captain Carryall told me the best story I’ve heard for ages. Picked it up at the islands last cruise. Awful fellow! You’d excuse me, I’m sure, if you knew him. How can I be of use to you, my dear sir?’

This last query belonged evidently to another region than the one into which the sea-captain, with his cœur-de-lion face, had allured him. So Ernest produced his card, and a note ‘from their mutual friend, Mr. Granville, he believed.’ The old merchant glanced at the signature, and without another look hurled himself out of his armchair, and seizing Mr. Neuchamp’s hand, wrung it with affectionate earnestness.

‘My dear sir—my dear fellow,’ gasped he; ‘I’d have given a hundred pounds if our friend could have been here, and heard that yarn of Charley Carryall’s. Now, attend to me while I tell you what you’ve got to do. You’ll have enough to amuse yourself till five o’clock, and then you’re to come here with your trunk. The carriage will call punctually at that hour, and you’re to come out with me to my little place, on the South Head Road, and confer upon me the very great obligation of staying with me till you go up the country—if you do go. Now, isn’t that settled?’

‘I am very sorry,’ stammered Ernest; ‘it is so extremely kind of you; but I have more than half promised to go up the country to-morrow to look at a station with a view to buying it.’

‘And get sold yourself,’ interjected Mr. Frankston. ‘Not just yet, if you’ll be my boy for a year or two. Whose desirable property is it?’

‘It belongs to a Mr. Selmore, whom I met at the Royal Hotel,’ answered Ernest, ‘who was very kind, and gave me some very good advice.’

‘Ha! ha! ha!’ shouted the old boy, becoming very purple in the face; ‘knew it was him—Gammon Downs, eh! Wonderful man, take in his own father if he was hard up, and suffer his venerable grandsire and maiden aunts to invest their last penny in a sour grass country, with fluky sheep, Cumberland and scab given in. Hanged if he wouldn’t, and go to church immediately afterwards. Most remarkable man, Hartley Selmore!’

Mr. Neuchamp wondered how Mr. Frankston knew the name of Mr. Selmore’s valuable estate, and how he had ever made any money, if he did nothing but laugh. Indeed, it seemed to be his chief occupation in life, judging from his conduct since they had met.

‘Then you would not advise me to invest just at present?’ inquired he.

‘Not unless you wish to be in the possession of a small, very small amount of experience, and not one solitary copper at the end of twelve months,’ said Mr. Frankston, with great decision. ‘This is a bad time to buy, stock are falling. Don’t begin at all till you see your way. If you meet Selmore tell him you’ve changed your mind for the present, and will write and let him know when it is convenient for you to inspect Gammon Downs. Five, sharp! old man;’ and with a paternal glance in his quick twinkling eye, Mr. Frankston made an affirmative nod to his chief clerk, who then and there entered, and a farewell one to Ernest, who after he left the portals stood for a moment like a man in a dream.

‘This is certainly a most remarkable country,’ he soliloquised; ‘with their outward resemblance to Englishmen, there must be some strange mental divergence not easily fathomed. I remember Granville telling me that this old buffer was a better father to him than his own had ever been, or some such strong expression; therefore I will at once decide to act upon his advice; Selmore and his winning way, notwithstanding. One must take up a position firmly or not at all. So I shall elect to stand or fall by this apoplectic old white-waistcoated guardian angel, as he proposes to be.’

‘My dear Neuchamp,’ said a cheery voice, while a cheery hand smote him familiarly on the back, ‘you look absorbed in contemplation. This is the wrong country for that. Action, sir, action is the word in Australia. Now, do you know what I was doing when I ran against you?—actually going down to Bliss’s livery stables to see if I could pick you out a decent hack. Burstall and Scouter are going to start early to-morrow, and of course you’ll want a hack that won’t frighten you after coming from the old country. With luck you’ll be under the verandah at Gammon Downs on the afternoon of the fourth day.’

Ernest braced himself together, and fixing his eyes upon the somewhat shifting orbs of his agreeable friend, said with studied calmness—

‘I shall be extremely sorry, my dear sir, to put you or your friends to any inconvenience on my account, but I have changed my mind, and do not think of leaving Sydney for a month or two.’

He was conscious of a stern, half-angry, searching gaze, which seemed to drag out of his countenance every word of the conversation with Mr. Frankston, before Mr. Selmore said grandly, ‘I am sorry to hear that you have so suddenly altered your plans. I had written to the overseer at Gammon Downs to have everything in readiness to receive you, and Burstall and Scouter will, I know, be put out at losing the pleasure of your company. But of course if you have made other arrangements—only I am afraid that if you don’t feel disposed to name a day for visiting Gammon Downs I may possibly dispose of it privately, and as the subject has cropped up (not at my initiation, you are aware), I do honestly think that no place in the country would have suited you half as well.’

Ernest felt sorely tempted to say that in a fortnight or three weeks he would be able to go up, but he remembered Mr. Frankston’s suggestion, and rather coldly answered that he would write and inform Mr. Selmore when it would be convenient for him to inspect Gammon Downs. The inevitable smile, which was worn in all weathers upon the face of Hartley Selmore, had so little real sincerity about it after this statement, that when he had received a warm parting grasp, Ernest felt strongly convinced that he had fitted the right arrow to the string.

CHAPTER III

In one respect at least it cannot be denied that the new country differs widely from the old. Events of important and fateful nature succeed each other with a rapidity so great as to affect the actor with a sensation of unreality. He soon learns, however, that this high-pressure transaction of life involves issues none the less exacting of consequences. He recognises the necessity of watchfulness, of prompt decision, and abandons himself to the accelerated rate of speed with a degree of confidence which he cannot help suspecting to be recklessness in disguise. It may be that ideas akin to this view of the subject passed through Mr. Neuchamp’s reflective mind while waiting for the appointed time at which he was to meet Mr. Frankston at his office. But a few hours since he had been on the verge of a headlong and what now appeared to him a dangerous investment, in which his whole capital might have been swamped, and his plans for social and colonial regeneration delayed for years, if not wholly frustrated. Now, with an equally violent oscillation, he had abandoned one recent friend, and adopted another equally unknown; to-morrow he might be embarked upon another project with equal risk of proximity to a colonial whirlpool capable of swallowing an argosy. What was he to do in this frightful procession, where fortune and ruin followed each other upon the path of life like express trains?

Was there such a thing as prudence, hesitation, or delay in Australian business matters? He would not be so credulous again. Was this cheerful old merchant, whose speech was kindness, and whose eye was truth apparently, to be unreservedly trusted? He would hear what his counsel was like meanwhile; he knew his friend Granville to be clear-sighted and direct. He fully trusted him, and had good reason to do so. Yes—he would put his fortune on this die. Vogue la galère!

He had consulted his watch more than once before the hansom deposited him with a portmanteau at the office of Paul Frankston and Co., at two minutes past five o’clock. Just afterwards, a well-appointed carriage, drawn by a well-matched pair of bays, drove rapidly up to the door. As he was approvingly regarding the well-bred horses, he did not observe that a young lady inside was essaying to open the door of the carriage. Ernest, shocked at his unchivalrous conduct, rushed to the door, wrenched it open, and with a slight but deferential bow assisted her to alight. She walked at once into the office, followed by Mr. Neuchamp.

‘I have been to Shaddock’s, papa, for some books, and I thought I was late,’ she said, throwing her arms round the old man’s neck, unconscious that Ernest was immediately behind.

‘You’re generally punctual, puss, and so I won’t scold her, Mr. Neuchamp,’ said the old boy with his customary chuckle, as the young lady turned round and beheld with surprise the involuntary witness of her tribute of affection. ‘Mr. Neuchamp, my daughter Antonia. My dear, this gentleman is coming to stay with us for a few months—for a year or two—all his life, perhaps, so the sooner you get acquainted the better.’

Then the young lady smiled, and hoped that Mr. Neuchamp would find their house pleasant, and become accustomed in time to papa’s jokes.

‘I can tell you it’s no joke at all, miss. You know very well that if Mr. Granville would have had you, I should have ordered you to marry him forthwith. Now, Mr. Neuchamp is a great friend of his, and all we can do for him will be too little.’

‘Mr. Granville was the nicest man I ever met,’ affirmed the young lady. ‘As for marrying, that is another matter. I daresay Mr. Neuchamp is coming to a proper understanding about your assertions, papa. How do you like the view, Mr. Neuchamp?’

As she spoke she leaned partly out of the carriage and gazed seawards. They were now driving upon a rather narrow and winding road, smoothly gravelled and well kept, much like a country lane in England. On the southern side the hill rose abruptly above them; on the lower side a dwarf wall of sandstone blocks occasionally protected the traveller from a too precipitous descent. Shrubs and flowers, as strange to Mr. Neuchamp as the flora of the far-famed bay, but a mile or two from them now, was to Sir Joseph Banks, bordered the road on either side in rich profusion. But the eye roamed over the intervening valley, over villas of trim beauty, clean-cut in the delicately pale sandstone, to the wondrous beauty of the landlocked sea. Blue as the Ægean, it was superior in its astonishing wealth of bays, mimic quays, and peerless anchorage to any harbour in the world. Crafts of all kinds and sizes floated upon its unruffled wave, from the majestic ocean steamer, gliding proudly to her anchorage, to the white-winged, over-rigged sailing boat, with her crew of lads seated desperately on her windward gunnel, to squatter out like a brood of wild ducks and right their crank craft, should fortune and the breeze desert them. Northward rose the ‘sullen shape’ of the great sandstone promontory, the North Head, towering over the surges that break endlessly at its base, and with its twin sentinel of the south, guarding the narrow entrance to the unrivalled haven. The fresh breeze swept through the girl’s hair and tinged her cheek with a transient glow, as she said, ‘Is not that lovely? I have seen it almost daily for years, but it never palls on me.’

‘Beautiful as a dream landscape,’ said Ernest from his heart. ‘It makes one recall dear old Sir Walter’s words—

‘“Where’s the coward that would not dare

To fight for such a land?”’

‘We are a peaceful people so far,’ said Mr. Frankston; ‘but I fancy that we should take to war kindly enough in the event of invasion, for instance, and hammer away as briskly and as doggedly as our forefathers.’

‘How many years have you been in this colony, may I ask?’ said Ernest. ‘Not long enough to shake off British feelings and prejudices, I am certain.’

‘About ten years,’ deposed Mr. Frankston confidently.

‘Oh, papa!’ said Miss Antonia.

‘Well!’ said the old gentleman, looking roguishly at her, ‘I may have been here a leetle longer; but I am within the strict limits of truth in stating I have been here for ten years—there is no doubt about that.’

Thus chatting, they had arrived at a pair of iron gates, through which entering, they turned into the smoothest of gravel roads, which was obviously watered daily.

The grounds through which the upstanding bay horses bore them over the superb gravel, were extensive, but in perfect order. Many of the trees, chiefly of semi-tropical habit, were of great age, and their broad glossy leaves, faintly stirred by the sea-breeze, had a murmuring sound, which told the heart of an imaginative listener tales of a calm enchanted main of coral reefs, of palm-fringed, milk-white strands, and all the wonders of the charmed Isles of the Great South Sea.

They drew up at the door of a large old-fashioned mansion, built of pale sandstone and surmounted by an extremely broad paved verandah, looking like a section of an ice-house.

‘Mr. Neuchamp!’ said the old gentleman, ‘this is your home as long as you are in Australia. I hope you like the look of it. It’s exactly twelve minutes to dinner-time; so I recommend both of you to waste no time in dressing. James!’

A serious-looking man-servant advanced, and taking Ernest’s portmanteau inducted him into a fascinating bedroom, with such a view of the sea that he was nearly led into forgetting the old gentleman’s paternal admonition, and being late for dinner.

However, by putting on extra steam, after the important transaction of the tie was completed, he managed to re-enter the hall just as Mr. Frankston came skipping downstairs, and was immediately entrusted with the care of Miss Frankston as far as the dining-room.

The evening was warm, but the perfection of cookery, combined with the quality and temperature of the wines to prevent any deep feeling of inconvenience. Miss Frankston talked pleasantly and unaffectedly, while the old gentleman neglected no opportunity of interjecting a joke or telling some remarkably good story, for Mr. Neuchamp’s benefit, of which his daughter did not always see the point.

After dinner Miss Frankston retired, with an assurance from her father that they did not intend to absent themselves for more than ten minutes, after which the serious butler brought in tenderly another bottle of claret, and departed.

‘Fill your glass, Mr. Neuchamp,’ said the old man; ‘it won’t hurt your head, nor your—any other part, I guarantee, for I imported it myself, and let us talk a very little business. What do you think of doing?’

‘My intention is fixed to purchase a landed property, an estate or station, as you call them. Of course I can only begin in a small way, and that was why Mr. Selmore’s place, Gammon Downs, seemed particularly suited.’

‘Gammon Downs has ruined every man but Selmore, who has ever had anything to do with it. It’s a sour, bad little place, in which you would have lost all your money in about a year, and would have had to sell, or give away, the stock.’

‘And did Mr. Selmore know that it was a bad investment, an undesirable property, when he offered it to me?’

‘I am sorry to say,’ quoth the old gentleman, ‘that he did know it, perfectly well; he knew that it has ruined half a dozen men, whose names I could give you.’

‘And is he considered to be a gentleman, and a man of honour, in this part of the world?’ inquired Mr. Neuchamp in tones of great surprise.

‘Well, he is a gentleman—that is, if good birth, good manners, and a good education go to make one. But he has always speculated to the verge of his capital, and now, stock being rather low, he is decidedly hard up. But he is a wonderfully sharp hand, and he generally contrives to get hold of a “black hat” at least once a year, which has pulled him through so far.’

‘A black hat?’ demanded Ernest; ‘and why not?—they seem common enough. And why should a hat, black or white, help him in any way?’

‘You don’t quite understand,’ answered Mr. Frankston, with a twinkle of his fun-loving gray eyes, ‘though it is more a bush expression than a town one, and rather slangy. A “black hat” in Australian parlance means a new arrival. And as people without colonial experience, like yourself, for instance, cannot be expected to understand the relative value of stock and stations, such a purchaser falls an easy prey to a talented but unscrupulous man like your friend Selmore.’

A light suddenly illumined the understanding of Mr. Neuchamp, whose faculties, like those of enthusiasts generally, were keen, if occasionally misdirected.

‘So that was what his friend Evelyn laughingly alluded to when they met us yesterday. “I see you have your black hat with you,” he said.’

‘By Jove! you don’t say so; did Evelyn say that?’ laughed the commercial mentor; ‘just like him; for two pins he’d have warned you not to believe a word he said. Fine fellow, Evelyn! And what did Mr. Selmore say?’

‘He only smiled, took off his own hat—an ordinary “Lincoln and Bennett”—stroked it, and put it on his head again.’

‘Capital, capital! O lord! that was Selmore all over. You can’t easily match him. He has the devil’s own readiness. Deuced clever fellow he always was! It’s a pity, too, really it is. If he were not so desperately cornered, I believe he’s a kind-hearted fellow in the main. But when he has bills to meet he’d take in his own father.’

‘Thou shalt want ere I want,’ as that famous freelance, Mr. Dugald Dalgetty, formerly of Marischal College, remarked, thought Ernest; but he said, ‘It seems then that my small capital was very nearly appropriated to the retirement of Mr. Selmore’s bills payable, which was not my primary intention in choosing a colonial career. My dear sir, I shall never be sufficiently thankful for your kind advice. What would you advise me to do now, if I may trespass further on your great kindness?’

‘My dear boy, as Granville’s friend, I look upon you as my son temporarily; and if I had a son who had just completed his education and wished to purchase station property, I should say to him, this is a country and stock-farming is a profession not to be understood all at once. Before investing your money spend a little time in learning the ways of the people of the country and of the management of stock before you invest a shilling.’

‘And how long do you think a man of reasonable intelligence ought to be in gaining the requisite knowledge?’ asked Ernest, rather dismayed at the prospect of a lengthened term of apprenticeship.

‘Not a day less than two years,’ answered Mr. Frankston decisively. ‘My advice to you is to travel for a month or two through the interior, and then to locate yourself on some station where you can acquire the details of practical management.’

‘But will not that be expensive, and what could I do with my money in the meantime?’

‘It will not be expensive; and as to your money, you can lodge it in a bank, where you will receive interest at current rates. You can select any of our Sydney banks, which are quite as safe as the Bank of England. I shall then be happy to give you introductions which will secure you a home and the means of acquiring the necessary knowledge.’

‘Thanks, a thousand thanks,’ quoth Ernest, much relieved; ‘at any rate I shall feel safe. I shall gladly take your advice; and the sooner I am off the better.’

‘Better stay a month with me,’ urged the kind-hearted old boy; ‘there is plenty of time for you to learn all about stock, and how to distinguish between Gammon Downs and a run that, if it doesn’t make a fortune all at once, will not ruin you under five years at any rate.’

But the man to whom he spoke had not crossed ten thousand miles of ocean, torn up old associations, and severed himself from the inherited life of an English country gentleman, to linger by the wayside. So he made answer—

‘My dear sir, I feel that if I have left many good friends behind I have found one as kind and more effectual in help and counsel. But my purpose is fixed. I cannot rest without I feel that I am on my way to its fulfilment. With your permission I must leave town next week at farthest.’

‘Well, well—I am not sure but that you are wise. Sydney is an easy place to spend money in, and there is nothing like buckling to when there is work to be done. I must see and pick you up a horse.’

‘Do you know,’ said Mr. Neuchamp, with an air of slight diffidence, ‘that I much prefer to walk; I shall see more of the country and be less hampered, I imagine, on foot.’

‘Walk! walk!’ repeated Mr. Frankston, rather taken aback; ‘don’t think of it.’

‘Why not, may I ask?’

‘Because in this country no one walks. It is too hot for that sort of thing, and it is not exactly the thing for a gentleman.’

‘But,’ pleaded Ernest, ‘I am a tolerable pedestrian; many a pleasant walking tour I have had in England, and indeed on the Continent. Is there any danger?’

‘None, that I am aware of—but I would certainly advise you to get a horse, or a couple; they are cheap enough here.’

‘You won’t be offended if I say that I really prefer walking. It is a capital thing in many ways; and I shall not get a chance of seeing Australian life without conventional spectacles so easily again perhaps.’

‘Please yourself, then,’ said Mr. Frankston; ‘I am very much in favour of letting people alone, particularly in unimportant matters; you will find out for yourself, I daresay, why I advised you to commence your journey on the outside of a good horse. You won’t take any more wine? Then we’ll go and get a cup of coffee from Antonia.’

They found that young lady ensconced in a large cane chair upon the balcony in front of the drawing-room, gazing dreamily over the dark glimmering waters.

‘You will find coffee on that round table, Mr. Neuchamp; and you, papa, will find your cigar-case on that ledge. Mr. Neuchamp, if you like to smoke, pray do so; I have no dislike to it in the open air.’

Mr. Neuchamp did not smoke. He held it to be a waste of time, of money, of brain-power; leading likewise to a false content with circumstances, with which the true man should wage ceaseless warfare. So he brought his chair near to that of Miss Frankston, and as the old gentleman lighted his cigar and leaned back in much comfort at some distance, he felt fully disposed for a little æsthetic talk.

‘What a glorious night,’ he remarked, ‘with this faint fresh sea-breeze! how grand the effect of the darkly bright water, the burning stars, and this superb cloudless heaven!’

‘It is so indescribably glorious,’ made answer Miss Frankston, ‘that I feel incensed with myself for not delighting in it more freshly and intensely. But it is thus with all familiar marvels that one has seen all one’s life.’

‘All one’s life?’ repeated he.

‘I was born in this house,’ said she simply, ‘and have sat on a chair like this, and gazed on the sea, as we are doing now, when I was a small lonely child.’

‘Oh! dreamy and luxurious southerner,’ laughed he. ‘A life of lotus-eating! Has it affected the tenor of your mind with any indisposition to exertion or change?’

‘As far as I can pretend to know, it has had the reverse tendency in my case. I have always had a passionate desire to travel. I am my father’s own daughter in that respect, he says.’

‘And where has Mr. Frankston chiefly been?’

‘Where has he not been? When he was young he managed to get away to sea, and roamed about the world splendidly; he has been to New Zealand, of course; all over the South Sea Islands; besides having travelled to England and the Continent, the East and West Indies, Russia, America, China, and Japan.’

‘You quite take my breath away. Your papa is a perfect Marco Polo. But why should he have gone to England?’

‘In order to see it, of course. Every Australian with sufficient brains to comprehend that there are more streets in the world than George Street would like to do that.’

‘And was Mr. Frankston born in Australia? I thought he told me that he had been ten years here.’

‘So he has been, and fifty more. He did not say only ten years. He likes to joke about being taken for an Englishman, and says it is because he has a red face and a white waistcoat.’

‘Well, I do not see the resemblance on those grounds,’ made answer Mr. Neuchamp guardedly. ‘But really, your papa is so exactly like an old gentleman of my acquaintance, who is a very Briton of Britons, that I took it for granted that he must be English.’

‘So he is English, and so am I English; only we were not born in that small great country. But you must think that there ought to be some distinguishing manner, or accent, about Australians, or you would not exhibit surprise at the resemblance.’

‘If I ever had such an absurd idea, I am now entirely disabused of it,’ said Mr. Neuchamp gallantly; ‘and I must hope that in a short time to come I may be taken for an Australian, of which at present there is not apparently the least prospect.’

‘Indeed, there is not,’ replied Miss Frankston; ‘pray excuse my smiling at the idea.’

‘But why should I be so advertised, apparently by my whole personal effect upon society, that the waiters at the hotel are as aware of the fact, the cabmen, the persons whom I pass in the street, as if I had “passenger’s luggage” marked on my shirt-front? It is not entirely my complexion, for I see blonde people in every direction; nor my clothes, nor my speech, I hope.’

‘I do not know, indeed. I cannot say. There must be some difference, or people would not notice it. But you must not imagine that because you are known to have just come from home that anything short of a compliment is intended. Indeed,’ said the girl with some diffidence, ‘it’s quite the other way.’

‘I am delighted to hear you say so,’ returned Mr. Neuchamp, ‘and it will comfort Wilhelm Meister during his “Wanderjähre.”’

‘Kennst du das Land?’

sang she. ‘Are you fond of music, Mr. Neuchamp? for I think I shall go in and give papa his nightly allowance of harmony. He refuses always to go to bed until I have sung to him. You had better keep him company.’

Mr. Neuchamp did so, the air of the balcony and the sight of the wondrous Southern Cross being as yet more attractive than the lady of the castle and her song.

‘That’s right,’ said the old gentleman, lighting another cigar and composing himself to listen. ‘Pity you don’t smoke; it’s an added pleasure, and one hasn’t too many in this world. It’s a luxury that lasts—one of the few things you can do as well when you’re old as when you are young.’

‘I must differ from you,’ returned Mr. Neuchamp. ‘I think it often leads to the wasting of valuable time, but I bow to your greater experience.’

‘And greater age; and you are right to be on the self-denying side for the present. But ask yourself what an old buffer like myself can do with his evenings more profitably. My eyes—not so good as they were thirty years since—have generally had a fair day’s work before dinner-time. Cards, talk, and a moderate smoke make up an old man’s evening. When I look at the sea here—and she always was a good friend to me—hear Antonia sing and play—bless her heart! and smoke a very good cigar, it is rather a cunningly mixed enjoyment, you must own. Now she’s off!’

The last statement was made simultaneously with the first notes of a song which floated out through the opened French windows, and proved to Mr. Neuchamp—a fair connoisseur—that his hostess had a fresh, true, soprano voice, and rather unusual execution. As he sat listening to song after song which Miss Frankston bestowed upon them with an utter absence of apologetic affectation, as the stars burned more brightly in the cloudless southern sky, as the wavelets kept their rhythmical murmurous monotone, he involuntarily asked himself if he had left all the social luxuries in the other hemisphere.

‘This is pleasant,’ said the merchant, after a long silence of words, with something between a sigh and a shake; ‘but there are such things as breakfast and business for to-morrow. We must end the concert. Make for that small table in the corner.’

Upon the piece of furniture referred to there stood a silver-encrusted inviting spirit-stand, with a bottle of iced Marco-brünner.

‘You must allow me to thank you for your songs, Miss Frankston,’ said Ernest; ‘whether the surroundings completed the witchery I cannot tell, but I have rarely enjoyed music so much.’

‘I am glad you like my singing,’ said she simply; ‘we see so few people that I am not always sure whether my old music-master and myself extract the correct expression in much of our practice.’

‘I can assure you of the correctness of your rendering,’ promptly assented the stranger-critic. ‘I heard the last song you were good enough to favour us with sung the week before I left. It had just been published. And I certainly prefer a slight emendation, which I think you have made.’

‘Most satisfactory!’ said she, with a mock inclination of respect; ‘and now good-night. Papa and breakfast wait for no man.’

CHAPTER IV

Few things are pleasanter, in their way, than staying in an agreeable house, while the welcome, the local recreations, the allotted leisure, are alike in the fresh bloom of unexhausted enjoyment. Your justifiable curiosity as to your friends’ intellects, experiences, and power of amusing you is for a while unsatiated. All is new and delightful; to be savoured with the full approval of conscience. The gardens are enchanted, the ladye peerless fair, the stranger knights courteous, the host an incarnation of appreciation and generosity. All this glamour lasts undiminished for the first fleeting week or two, possibly survives the month. Then the process of disenchantment commences. Either you have business external to the castle, or you have not. In the former case, you begin to feel darkly fearful of neglect, and conscience, if you keep one, self-interest if you do not, commences to be ‘faithful,’ even to inconvenience. If you own no care, or tie, or duty, which may not be postponed to the ‘Cynthias of the minute,’ and still prolong your stay, you cease to be a guest and fall into the more prosaic rôle of habitué, inmate, lodger, amenable to family rules and to criticism. Then the fair ladye, if she be the sole cause of detention, is at times sharply scanned, lest the proverbial chandelier bear hard on the value of the entertainment. On the whole, a state of perpetual arrival at the mansions of favourably prejudiced strangers, combined with comparatively early departure,—unerringly anticipating the first shade of social satiety,—would probably comprise most of the pleasurable sensations permissible in this imperfect existence.

Mr. Neuchamp had, from the first, no thought of trenching upon even the border of this ‘debatable land’; for after a very short trial of this pleasant life he told Miss Frankston that if he stayed for twelve months, he should still find new objects of interest. He thereupon completed the painful process known as ‘making up one’s mind,’ and arranged to leave for the interior on the following day. Not that he was peculiarly sensible to any state of uncertainty. His enthusiastic temperament saved him from indecision. Having, with what he believed to be sufficient care and circumspection, elaborated a plan, he was uneasy and incapable of enjoyment until an advance in line was made. His, the fervid temperament, which delights itself with intensifying the action of all warfare, declared against circumstance, ever the foe of generous youth and ardent manhood.

So impatient was Mr. Neuchamp to hear the first shot of his campaign fired, that he had the stern virtue to refuse to remain another week for a certain picnic, at which all the notabilities of the metropolis were to be present, and at which the purest form of social pleasure might be anticipated.

‘My dear Miss Frankston,’ replied he, when urged upon this subject by Antonia, ‘I grieve that I cannot consistently comply with your kind request. But I feel myself so rapidly turning into a mere town lounger, that I am sure another week or two would complete the transformation, and my moral ruin. For besides, unfortunately’—here he smiled at his expressed regret—‘I fixed to-morrow for my departure from your most pleasant and hospitable home, and I never alter my plans.’

‘I should be very sorry to wish you to alter them for our sake,’ said the girl, unable, however, to suppress a slight tone of pique. ‘No doubt you will be much happier exploring the highway across the Blue Mountains, which, of course, will be a great novelty to you. But I should not have thought a few days would have made any difference. You will find it dull enough at Garrandilla, where you are going.’

‘Dull!’ said he, ‘dull! in the heart of a new continent, a new world, with untold stores of new plants, new companions, new experiences, the outset of a new life. My dear Miss Antonia, how can it be dull to any person of ordinary intelligence?’

‘Well,’ answered she, smiling, ‘perhaps it is I who am dull for thinking so. Most young men who have left our house for the interior have been of that opinion. But I will not attempt to cloud your anticipations. Only, I really do think you ought not to walk.’

‘Why not? What possible difference can it make how I get over the twenty or thirty miles a day before I reach the station, to which your father has so kindly given me letters of introduction? Such jolly walking tours as I have had in England and Wales, in Ireland, and one lovely vacation tour in our old home, Normandy.’

‘What a charming thing to be able to see the place where one’s ancestors lived a thousand years ago!’ said she eagerly. (Mr. Neuchamp, having let slip the admission of the early settlement of his family in that rather stirring Norse colony, had been cross-questioned upon the subject.) ‘How you must have enjoyed it! That’s the worst of Australia—there’s nothing a hundred years old in it, except a red-gum tree. But seriously, you may find yourself exposed to inconveniences by walking, like a labouring man. It is not the fashion in our country for gentlemen to walk.’

Miss Antonia had entirely settled the matter by the last observation. Fashion had been through life one of the deadliest enemies to the peace of Ernest Neuchamp. In his own country he had alarmed his relatives and scandalised his neighbours by his wild defiance of that successor of Thor and Odin, as he profanely termed the social belief of decorous Christians. Was he to bow the knee to this false god in a strange land, which at least he hoped to be pure from the idolatries of the effete civilisation from which he had fled? Not so, by St. Newbold! the patron saint of his house. He smiled with great gentleness as he answered, with half sad but most irrevocable decision—

‘My dear Miss Frankston, I did not become a colonist with any idea of being trammelled by usages or customs. You will pardon me, I am sure, if I retain my first intention.’

‘Most certainly,’ said she. ‘I shouldn’t wonder if you had a friend or two in England who called you obstinate. But you will tell me some day how you got on, and whether there was any small portion of reason in the advice given you.’

‘I shall for ever feel grateful,’ he said warmly, ‘for the intention of the advice, and for the great kindness which has accompanied it. Whether or not I succeed in Australia, I shall always have one pleasant remembrance to look back upon.’

‘My father, and I also, will be glad if you feel thus,’ she said, with the ordinary calm kindness of her tone; ‘and now, I must go to town. You leave to-morrow?’

‘Yes; I am sorry, in one way, to say so.’

‘Then papa will be able to give you his final counsels to-night. I know he wishes to have some last words with you.’

Dinner over and the night being fine, as usual, an adjournment to the sea-balcony was carried unanimously. When the first cigar was half through, Mr. Frankston thus addressed his guest—

‘So you are off to-morrow, Antonia tells me, and can’t be persuaded to wait for the grand picnic. I don’t say you’re wrong. When the ship’s ready and the wind’s fair, it’s better to wait for no repairs. You’re going to walk, too. It’s a long way; but you’re young and strong, and you’ll find out all I can tell you for yourself; if you don’t, all the telling in the world won’t help you. Now, see here, we’ll arrange everything for the first twelve months, or two years, if you don’t care to change.’

‘You’re most kind and generous, my dear sir, and I don’t know what I should have done without you,’ said Ernest.

‘Thank you,’ said Mr. Frankston; ‘we’ll see about that in about five or six years, if we all live so long—we can’t tell just yet. I may be persuading you not to buy in with a rising market, which would double your money in three years, or I may be saving you from losing all but what you stand upright in in about the same time. I think it’s the last, but we can’t tell. This is an uncertain country, particularly about rain. And rain means fat stock, cheap money, and general prosperity.’

‘But can’t one provide against the want of rain?’ inquired Mr. Neuchamp, who was prone to array himself against Providence, holding that all things might be met or conquered by energy and foresight. ‘Irrigation, for instance.’

‘There is no provision that can be made,’ said the man of experience, ‘except on a small scale, and irrigation means labour; and paying for labour in Australia, except to a very limited extent, means ruin. A great drought is like a heavy gale at sea; you may be saved, or you may go down with all hands. One visitation is as easy to stop or to calculate about as the other.’

‘And is it a drought now?’

‘Yes; and one of the worst ever known.’

‘Then what will happen?’

‘Stock,’ said the old man, ‘will keep on falling in price. Many stockholders will be ruined, including Selmore, if he does not clear out Gammon Downs to a——’

‘A black hat,’ laughed Ernest. ‘I shall remember that joke. It came near, as our American fellow-passenger would say, costing me five thousand pounds.’

‘But they won’t be all ruined,’ continued Mr. Frankston; ‘and what I strongly advise you to do is this—you’ve left your money, for a year certain, in the Bank of New Holland, for which you’ll get tidy interest, and it’s as safe as the Bank of England—you go, where I give you this letter of introduction, to Forrester, who is a good fellow and knows me, and it’s a good station, Garrandilla; that’s a great matter, as you will find. There you will be treated like a gentleman. It will cost you nothing but your clothes. There you’ll learn all that can be learnt about stock. In a couple of years, say (here Mr. Neuchamp winced), or perhaps eighteen months, you’ll be fit to look after a station, and able to buy one for yourself.’

‘Don’t you think a year’s experience,’ pleaded Mr. Neuchamp, ‘might——’

‘No, I don’t,’ stoutly asserted the senior; ‘and in two years it’s my belief that your five thousand pounds will buy as large a station as ten thousand would now.’

The following morning saw Mr. Neuchamp, who had risen early and made all his arrangements, fully prepared for the momentous plunge into real life. He had attired himself in an old tourist’s suit of rough serviceable tweed, and donned a pair of thick-soled lace-up boots fitted for climbing mountain sides, and the roughest pedestrian work that might occur. He had filled his knapsack with the requisites that a gentleman cannot dispense with, even in the lightest marching order, and had adopted a brown wide-awake hat, which he trusted would relieve him henceforward from any injurious sobriquet. Thus armed at all points, he awaited breakfast and the arrival of Antonia Frankston, to whom he felt inclined to bid a more heartfelt farewell than he had thought any young lady in the southern hemisphere would have earned the right to receive.

Let me not be understood to assume for a moment that Mr. Neuchamp was wholly insensible to the tender passion. But he was fully possessed and occupied for the present by the ‘enterprise of great pith and moment’ which he contemplated. And the boy-god found the tenement of his heart for the time so thoroughly filled by busy, unsympathetic ideas, that he was fain to hover like a bird round a populous dovecote, vainly seeking a single unoccupied pigeon-hole.

‘Friendship, indeed,’ Mr. Neuchamp confessed to himself, ‘had sprung up of an intellectual and truly fraternal nature between himself and this girl, who had but few companions, and fewer intimates of her own age.’ But he told himself that it was a prosaic alliance of intelligence, natural, and almost inevitable between two people not very different in age, whose temperaments were rather widely apart, but whose tastes and feelings assimilated closely. Just the kind of feeling he might have had for his lady cousins in England, but that they showed no respect for his opinions and openly jeered at his aspirations.

Now Antonia Frankston paid the compliment of respect to all the principles and opinions which he enunciated, even while doing battle unyieldingly against their practical application.

‘It is a great matter to be thoroughly comprehended,’ he had said to himself. ‘One may be right or one may be wrong. I am the last person to deny free exercise of opinion, and the healthful effect of free antagonism. But I must own to a preference of being understood by my critics.’

Under this stimulus he had poured forth, in the leisure time which he had abundantly enjoyed with Miss Frankston, his plans for the regeneration of society, and of Australian life in particular. He had foretold the reign of abstract justice, and the coming dethronement of shams. He saw afar a general refinement in manners, pervading culture, which was harmoniously to fuse classes, now so unhappily divided; the co-operation of labour with capital, and the equal partition of the public lands. In a word, all the fair visions of the higher life, the splendid possibilities of the race which commend themselves to ardent youth and generous manhood, in that springtime of the heart when beautiful emanations are evolved in multiform glory, to be chilled and withered by colder age and hard experience.

To the record of these and similar aspirations, as they poured forth from the enthusiastic soul of Ernest Neuchamp, tinged with poetic thoughts and dignified by a pure ‘enthusiasm of humanity,’ had Antonia listened, by no means without interest. It was new to her to hear projects free from the taint of selfish gain or personal advantage. And though she entered her protests, gently but firmly, against many of his conclusions, there was to him a deep interest in dialogues in which he secured so patient, so fair a listener, gifted with a high and cultured intelligence.

Thus Mr. Neuchamp made all necessary adieux, and having received his credentials, in the shape of a letter of introduction to the owner of Garrandilla, where he was to abide during his novitiate, and a letter of credit in case he should have unexpected need of money, departed from the hospitable gates of Morahmee.

With his knapsack on his back he paced through the city. Being not sufficiently philosophical, I must confess, to avail himself of the George Street pavement, he crossed Hyde Park, and turning round to take one last look at the blue waters and the grand headland, it may be that his eyes rested lingeringly upon the nearest point which he could recognise to Morahmee.

Then he turned his back upon nature’s loveliness and fond regrets, and strode resolutely onward towards the far untried Waste—to him the land of hope and of endeavour.

Taking a somewhat diagonal course adown and across the old-fashioned dingy streets, where the aged, decrepit, but in some instances picturesque dwellings tell a tale of the earliest colonial days, Mr. Neuchamp presently debouched upon the great arterial thoroughfare which, before the advent of the steam king, led to that somewhat mysterious domain, vaguely designated as ‘the bush.’

Here he began to put on his tourist pace, and no longer trammelled by fear of the fashionable world, exerted those powers of progression which had won him fame in Scottish Highlands, by Killarney’s fair lake, and on the cols and passes which, amid eternal snow, girdle the monarch of the Alps.

Mile after mile, at a rattling pace, went he, pleased to find himself once more upon a highroad, though comparatively disused, as the Dover and Calais route, where the great empty posting-houses tell of ‘ruin,’ and the ‘ruthless king,’ which has driven coach and guard, ostler and landlord, boots and barmaid, all off the road together. Such had been the doom of this once inevitable and crowded highway; and Mr. Neuchamp noted with interest the remains of a former state, long passed away.

‘Really!’ soliloquised he, ‘I have come upon a locality adapted for antiquarian research. I did not expect that in Australia. As I perceive, those old buildings are massive and imposing, with walls of solidity far from common. What fine trees are in the orchards! I must see what o’clock it is. This venerable mansion seems inhabited; I wonder if I could get a glass of beer?’

This latter outcome of the inner consciousness, not particularly germane to antiquarian research, was the result of a discovery by Mr. Neuchamp that he was uncommonly heated. The truth was that he had, in the ardour of his feelings, been pelting along at the rate of four miles and a half an hour, forgetting that the thermometer stood at 85 in the shade; hence his complexion was much heightened; his shirt-collar limp to a degree whence hope was fled for ever; ‘his brow was wet with honest whatsyname,’ while a general and unpleasant saturation of his whole clothing told the tale of a temperature unknown to his European experiences. To his great contentment, the hostelry was inhabited and still offered entertainment to man and that fellow-creature, whose good example had the more highly organised vertebrate followed what romances of crime had remained unwritten; what occupations, literary and sensational, had been gone; what reputations, even of Ouida, Miss Braddon, and that ‘bright particular star,’ of the firmament of fiction, the great George Eliot herself, had been faint and prosaically mediocre! The surviving of the past favourites of the ‘shouting multitude’ owed its spirituous existence to the fact of a byroad from certain farms, here reaching the old highway. By dint of an early start, and a little night-work, the farmers and dealers were able to reach and return from the metropolis within the day, thus dispensing with the swift and, to provincial ideas, somewhat costly train. But the long hours and late and early travelling necessitated beer; hence this relic of past bibulousness with ancient porch hard by a real milestone, the twelfth, which our wayfarer hailed with joy, eagerly scanning the deeply-graven numerals.

He found the outer room presided over by an excessively clean old woman, whose starched cap and general get-up reminded him of a well-known Cambridge landlady. Espying a pewter, he demanded a pint of ale, and sitting down upon a bench, disposed of the cool draught with the deep enjoyment which the pedestrian or the worker alone knows. This duty completed, he consulted his watch, and finding that mid-day was passed, decided upon a slight refection of bread and cheese, and a halt.

‘So you still keep the house open?’ he observed to his hostess. ‘I see a good many of those along the road are closed.’

‘So should we ’a been closed too,’ said the ancient dame, ‘but this road, as the fruit-carts and firewood and small farming loads comes in by, keeps a little trade up, and we’ve not a big family; there’s my husband, as is out, and my son, as works in the garden, and does most of the work about the place, and Carry.’

‘And you have lived here a long time, I suppose?’

‘Over forty years, since my husband, John Walton, got a grant of land, and we came here just after we married. We built the house after we’d made a bit of money, and planted the orchard, and did every mortal thing as is done.’

‘And you lost all the traffic when the train commenced to run.’

‘All the paying business; everything but this small line as we used to despise. Father, he was for clearing out, but I couldn’t bear to leave the old place; we’d saved a bit o’ money, and says I: “Well, father, suppose we live on here comfortable and steady, and don’t change. There’s Jem and Carry fit to do all the work; we don’t need no servants, you can potter about the garden, and the pigs and poultry, and bee-hives, and they all makes a bit of money, or saves it, and we’ll, maybe, do as well as those that goes up into the bush, and goodness knows where.” But you’ll have some lunch, sir—please to walk this way.’

Mr. Neuchamp was forthwith inducted into an old-fashioned room, the size and pretensions of which showed the different style of the entertainment once supplied. Leading from this were several bedrooms, to the open door of one of which the old dame pointed. Here, with the help of a sufficiency of cold water and the cleanest towels, he restored himself to a condition favourable to the proper appreciation of lunch.

When he returned he found the table being laid by a neatly-dressed, modest-looking young woman of five or six and twenty.

‘I suppose you are Carry?’ he said, mentally comparing her with an English country girl of the same rank and condition, and concluding that the damsel before him did not show to any great disadvantage.

‘Mother’s been telling you, sir, I suppose,’ said the girl, smiling; ‘she’s glad to talk about old times with any one, it’s nearly all she has to do now.’

‘Well, we had a chat about the state of the roads,’ affably rejoined Mr. Neuchamp; ‘you have a very nice old place here, and I think you were very wise to stay.’

‘I don’t mind it,’ said the girl, ‘though it is awfully dull sometimes. I’m used to a quiet life; but it’s rather hard upon Jem, my brother that is, sir, for he might have bettered himself in many ways.’

‘How do you think he might?’

‘Why, ever so many times he’s had offers of employment, but he won’t leave the old people; and then, he might go into the bush.’

‘The bush! and is every one who goes into the bush certain to do well?’

‘Oh no, sir; but every young man of spirit in the colony likes to have a turn, and run his chance there some time or other. Excuse me, sir, but you haven’t been very long out, have you?’

‘How the deuce does she know that?’ inquired Mr. Neuchamp of himself. ‘Is there anything written on this brow, and so on? However, I have catechised her sufficiently, and cannot object to a little cross-examination in return.’

‘Well, Carry, the truth is that I have not been very long out from home, as you very wisely have discovered; that’s the reason I am a little inquisitive about your country. But how did you know?’

‘By lots of things,’ said Carry, rather mischievously; ‘by your having such a fresh complexion, and so many mosquito-bites,—they don’t bite us natives that way; and by your clothes, and your shirt-collar, and your boots, and your pack, or whatever it is—and by your being on foot.’

‘What a long list, Carry! and the worst of it is, that if I was asked how I should know whether you are a native, as you call yourself, and not an English girl, I should not have half as many things to swear by.’

‘And what would they be, sir?’

‘Let me see. I think you are a little paler, for one thing—but that’s the heat, I suppose—and rather taller—and a little, only a very little slighter—and your hands are smaller; just let me look, for I can’t be sure; and, on the whole, rather prettier than most English girls are.’

‘Oh, nonsense!’ interrupted Carry at this point, with a not wholly displeased expression. ‘I don’t believe half of it. I’m sure everybody says English girls have such lovely complexions and figures, and cut out us poor “currency lasses” altogether.’

‘That’s not true, Carry, my dear,’ protested Mr. Neuchamp with warmth. ‘I can assure you that no one would think to look at you that you had lived all your life in a climate something like a greenhouse, with the door shut. It can’t be such a very had one after all, if it turns out such very nice specimens of——’