“What do you say, Mr. Redgrave?” asked the unconvinced damsel. “Is it wrong for the caged bird to droop and pine, or ought it to turn a tiny wheel and pull up a tiny pail of nothing contentedly all its days, unmindful of the gay greenwood and the shady brook; or, if it beat its breast against the wires, and lie dead when the captor comes with seed and water, is it to be mourned over or cast forth in scorn?”
“’Pon my word,” answered Jack, helplessly, rather overawed by the strong feeling and earnest manner of the girl, and much “demoralized” by those wonderful eyes of hers, “I hardly feel able to decide. I’m a great lover of adventure and change and all that kind of thing myself; can’t live without it. But for ladies, somehow, I really – a – feel inclined to agree with your brother. Sphere of home – and – all that, you know.”
“Sphere of humbug!” answered she, with all the sincerity of contempt in her voice. “You men stick together in advocating all kinds of intolerable dreariness and nonsensical treadmill work because you think it good for women! You would be ashamed to apply such reasoning to anything bearing on your own occupations. But I will not say another word on the subject; it always raises my temper, and that is not permitted to our sex, I know. Did you see my dear old Mameluke to-day, Mark?”
“Yes, and he’s now in the stable.”
“Oh, thanks; we must have a gallop to-morrow and show Mr. Redgrave our solitary landscape. That will be one ripple on the Dead Sea.”
Life seemed capable of gayer aspects, even upon the Warroo, as next morning three residents of that far region rode lightly along the prairie trail. The day was cool and breezy; a great wind had come roaring up from the south the evening before, crashing through the far woods and audible in mighty tones for many a mile before it stirred the streamers of the couba trees, as they all sat under the verandah in the sultry night. Then the glorious coolness of the sea-breeze, almost the savour of the salt sea-foam and of the dancing wavelets, smote upon their revived senses. Hence, this day was cool, bracing, with a clear sky and a sighing breeze. Jack was young, and extremely susceptible. Maud Stangrove was a peerless horsewoman, and as she caused Mameluke, a noble old fleabitten gray, descendant of Satellite, to plunge and caracole, every movement of her supple figure, as she swayed easily to each playful bound, completed the sum of his admiration and submission.
“Oh, what a day it is!” said she. “Why don’t we have such weather more often? I feel like that boy in Nick of the Woods, when he jumps on his horse to ride after the travellers whom the Indians are tracking, and who shouts out a war-whoop from pure glee and high spirits. ‘Wagh! wagh! wagh! wagh!’ Don’t you remember it, Mr. Redgrave?”
“Oh yes, quite well.” Jack had read nearly all the novels in the world, and, if any good could have been done by a competitive examination in light reading, would have come out senior wrangler. “Nick of the Woods was very powerfully written – that is, it was a good book; so was the Hawks of Hawk Hollow. Dick Bruce was the boy’s name.”
“Of course. I see you know all about him, and Big Tom Bruce is the one that was shot, and didn’t tell them that he had a handful of slugs in his breast till after the Indian town is taken, and then he falls down, dying. Grand fellow, is not he? Nothing of that sort in our wretched country, is there?”
“We had a little fighting at that Murdering Lake we are going to,” said Mark. “Nothing very wonderful. But my horse was speared under me, and he remembered it for the rest of his life. Red Bob was killed; however, as he said before he died, it wasn’t ‘twenty to one, or anything near it.’ He had shot scores of blacks, if his own and others’ tales were true.”
“And why were you engaged in your small war, Master Mark?” demanded Maud. “It’s all very well to talk about Indians, and so on, but what had these miserable natives done to you?”
“They were not so miserable in those days,” said her brother; “this tribe was strong and numerous. I would have shirked it if possible; but they speared a lot of the cattle and one of the men. We had to fight or give them up the run.”
“The old story of Christianity and civilization? However I know you would not have hurt a hair of their red-ochred locks if you could have avoided it. Indeed, I wonder you kept your own scalp safe in those days. The most simple savage might have circumvented you, I’m sure, you good, easy-going, unsuspicious, conscientious old goose that you are.”
Here another expression, which Jack preferred much to those more animated glances which opposition had called forth, came over her features; as she gazed at her brother a soft light seemed gradually to arise and overspread her whole countenance, till her eyes rested with an expression of deep unconscious tenderness upon the bronzed, calm face of Mark Stangrove. “I wonder if anything in the whole world could lead to her looking at me like that?” thought Jack.
“This is the place. ‘Stand still, my steed,’” quoted Maud, as she reined up Mameluke upon a pine-crested sand-hill, after a couple of hours’ riding. “There you can just see the water of the lake. Isn’t it a pretty place? The pretty place, I should say, as it is the only bit with the slightest pretension upon the whole dusky green and glaring red patch of desert which we call our run.”
It was, in its way, assuredly a pretty place. The waters were clear, and had the hue of the undimmed azure, as they gently lapped against the grassy banks. Around was a fringe of dwarf eucalypti, more spreading and umbrageous than their congeners are apt to be. On the further side was a low sand-hill with a thicker covering of shrubs. A drove of cattle were feeding near; a troop of half-wild horses had dashed off at their approach, and were rapidly receding in a long, swaying line in the distance. A blue crane, the Australian heron, flew with a harsh cry from the shallows, and sailed onward with stately flight.
“Oh for a falcon to throw off!” cried Maud, whose spirits seemed quite irrepressible. “Why cannot I be a young lady of the feudal times, and have a hawk, with silken jesses, and a page, and a castle, and all that? Surely this is the stupidest, most prosaic country in the world. One would have thought that in a savage land like this they would have devoted themselves to every kind of sport, whereas I firmly believe one would have more chance of hunting, shooting, or fishing in Cheapside. Why did I ever come here?” she pursued in a voice of mock lamentation.
“Because you were born here, you naughty girl,” said Mark; “are you not ashamed to be always running down your native country? Don’t I see a fire on the far point?”
They rode round the border of the lake, scaring the plover and the wild fowl which swam or flew in large flocks in the shallows. When they reached the spot where the small cape formed by the sand advanced boldly into the waters of the lake at the eastern side, they observed that the fire appertained to a small camp of blacks. Riding close up, the unmoved countenance of “old man Jack” appeared with his two aged wives, while at a little distance, superintending the boiling of certain fish, was the girl Wildduck. She turned to them with an expression of unaffected pleasure, and, rushing up to Miss Stangrove, greeted her with the most demonstrative marks of affection. Suddenly beholding Redgrave, she looked rather surprised; then, bestowing a searching look of inquiry upon him, she made her usual half-shy, half-arch, salutation.
“So Wildduck is a protégée of yours, Miss Stangrove,” said Jack; “I had no idea she had such distinguished patronage.”
“Maud is a bit of a missionary in her way,” said Mark; “though perhaps you might not think it. Many a good hour she has wasted over the runaway scamp of a gin, and a little rascal of a black boy we had.”
“Poor things!” said Maud, with quite a different tone from her ordinary badinage. “They have souls, and why should one not try to do them a little good! I am very fond of this Wildduck, as she is called, though Kalingeree is her real name. I remember her quite a little girl. Isn’t she a pretty creature? – not like gins generally are.”
“She is wonderfully good-looking,” said Jack; “I thought so the first time I saw her – when she was galloping after a lot of horses.”
“I am afraid her stock-keeping propensities have led her into bad company,” said Maud; “and yet it is but a natural passion for the chase in the nearest approach the bush affords. I can’t help feeling a deep interest in her. You wouldn’t believe how clever she is.”
“She looks to me very much thinner than she used to be,” said Mark. “How large her eyes seem, and so bright. I’m afraid she will die young, like her mother.”
“She has been ill, I can see,” said Maud, as the girl coughed, and then placed her hand upon her chest, with a gesture of pain. “What has been the matter with you, Wildduck?”
“Got drunk, Miss Maudie; lie out in the rain,” said the girl, who was as realistic as one of – let us say – Rhoda Broughton’s heroines.
“Oh, Wildduck!” said her instructress; “how could you get tipsy again, after all I said to you?”
“Tipsy!” said the child of nature, with a twinkle of wicked mirth in her large bright eye – “tipsy! me likum tipsy!”
Mark and his guest were totally unable to retain their gravity at this unexpected answer to Miss Stangrove’s appeal, though Jack composed his countenance with great rapidity as he noticed a deeply-pained look in Maud’s face, and something like a tear, as she hastily turned away.
“Are the old miamis there still, Wildduck?” asked Mark, by way of turning the subject.
“Where you shoot black fellow, long ago?” asked she. “By gum, you peppered ’em that one day. You kill ’em one – two – Misser Stangrove.”
“No, I think not, Wildduck. I fired my gun all about. Don’t think I killed anybody. Black fellow spear Red Bob that day.”
“Aha!” said the girl, her face suddenly changing to an expression of passion. “Serve him right, the murdering dog. He kill poor black fellows for nothing; shoot gins, too, and picaninnies; ask old man Jack.”
Here she said a few words rapidly in her own language to the old man. The effect was instantaneous. He sprang up – he seized his spear – his eyes suddenly assumed a fixed and stony stare – with raised head he strode forward with all the lightness and activity of youth. He muttered one name repeatedly. Then his expression changed to one of horrible exultation.
“I believe old man Jack was there,” said Mark. “Perhaps he threw the spear that hit me.”
“Dono,” said Wildduck; “might ha’ been. He’d have done it quick if he had, I know that.”
A spring cart with luncheon had been sent on at an early hour, and commanded to camp close by the deserted miamis, which had never been inhabited since the battle. Leaving their sable friends, with an invitation to come up and receive the fragments, they rode over to the spot indicated.
“Give me the hobbles,” said Mark to the lad who drove the spring cart. “You can lay the cloth and set the lunch.”
CHAPTER XI
“The Phantom Knight, his glory fled,
Mourns o’er the fields he heaped with dead.“ —Scott.
Jack had the privilege of lifting Maud from her horse, and then their three nags were unsaddled and hobbled. Rejoicing in this “constitutional freedom,” they availed themselves of it to the extent of drinking of the lake, rolling in the sand, and cropping with relish the long grass which only grew on the lake-side.
“Here is the very spot – how strange it seems!” said Mark, “that we should be drinking bottled ale and eating pâtés de foie gras just where spears were flying and guns volleying. It was night, however, when we made our charge. We had been tracking all day, and were guided by their fires latterly.”
“Did they make much of a fight?” asked Jack.
“They were plucky enough for a while. Our party had a few nasty wounds. They had some advantage in throwing their spears, as they were close, and we could not see them as well as they saw us. Poor old Bob! the spear that killed him was a long slender one. It went nearly through him. They took to the lake at last.”
“And have they never inhabited these miamis since?” asked Maud.
“Never, from that day to this. Blacks are very superstitious. They believe in all kinds of demons and spirits. You ask Wildduck when she comes up.”
They walked over the “dark and bloody ground” when the repast was over. There were the ruined wigwams just as their occupants had fled from them at the first volley of their white foes, nearly a generation since. Marks of haste were apparent. The wooden buckets used for water, and scooped from the bole of a tree, a boomerang or two, a broken spear, mouldered away together.
“The situation,” said Jack, “is not without a tinge of romance. This isn’t particularly like Highland scenery; and blacks always return and carry off their dead, if possible; otherwise Sir Walter’s lines might stand fairly descriptive —
“‘A dreary glen —
Where scattered lay the bones of men,
In some forgotten battle slain,
And bleached by drifting wind and rain.’”
“It must be a terrible thing in a deed like this not to be quite certain whether one was in the right or not. Very likely some of those buccaneers of stockmen provoked this tribe, if you only knew it, Mark.”
“Perhaps they did, my dear – more than likely. But we had only plain facts to go upon. They were killing our cattle and servants. We did not declare war. It was the other way. Injustice may have been done, but my conscience is clear.”
“There comes old man Jack, and Mrs. old man Jack, collectively,” said Redgrave. “Let us hear what they say about it.”
Slowly, and with sad countenances, the little band approached, and sat down at a short distance from the luncheon. They were regaled with the delicacies of civilization. Maud administered port wine to Wildduck, and, guardedly, to old Nannie. The others declined the juice of the grape, but partook freely of the eatables.
“Now, then, Wildduck,” said Redgrave, “tell us anything you know about this battle. Your people never lived here since?”
“Never, take my oath,” said Wildduck, “never no more – too many wandings (demons). One black fellow sleep there one night, years ago; he frighten to death – close up. He tell me – ”
“What did he tell you, Wildduck?” said Maud.
“Well,” began the girl, sitting down on her heels in the soft grass, “he was out after cattle and tracked ’em here at sundown. So he says, ‘I’ll camp at the old miamis, blest if I don’t. Baal me frighten,’ he say. Well, he lie down long a that middle big one miami and go fast asleep. In the middle of the night he wake up. All the place was full of blacks. Plenty – plenty,” spreading out both her hands. “They ran about with spears, and womrahs, and heilaman. Then he saw white fellows, and fire came out of their guns. Very dark night. Then a white fellow, big man with red hair, fire twice – clear light shine, and he saw a tall black fellow send spear right through him. He say,” said the girl, lowering her voice, “just like old man Jack.”
“This is something like the legitimate drama, Miss Stangrove,” said Jack. “You see there is more good, solid tragedy in Australian life than you fancied.”
“Go on, Wildduck,” said she. “What a strange scene – only to imagine! What happened then?”
“When white fellow fall down, the tall black fellow give a great jump, and shout out, only he hear nothing. Then all the blacks make straight into the lake. He look again – all gone – he hear ’possum, night-owl – that’s all.”
“And do you believe he saw anything really, Wildduck? Come now, tell the truth,” cross-examined Mark.
“Well, Charley, big one, frighten; I see that myself. But he took a bottle from the Mailman’s Arms, and he’d never wait till he saw the bottom – I know that. Here come old man Jack; he look very queer, too.”
The old savage had begun to walk up towards the spot where they had gathered rather closely together in the interest of Wildduck’s legend. There was, as she had said, something strange in his appearance.
He walked in a slow and stately manner; he held himself unusually erect. From time to time he glanced at the old encampment, then at the lake. His face lit up with the fire of strong passion, and then he would mutter to himself, as if recalling the past.
“Ask him what he is thinking about, Wildduck,” said Mark.
The girl spoke a few words to the old man. It was the philter that renews youth, the memory of the passionate past. He stalked forward with the gait of a warrior. Shaking off the fetters of age, he trod lightly upon the well-known scene of conflict, with upraised head and lifted hand. Words issued from his lips with a fiery energy, such as none present had ever witnessed in him.
“He say,” commenced Wildduck, “this the place where his tribe fight the white man, long time ago. Misser Stangrove young feller then. Many black fellow shot – so many – so many (here she spread out her open palms). By and by all run into lake.”
“Does he remember Red Bob being killed?” asked Maud.
“Red Wanding,” cried the girl, still translating the old man’s speech, which rolled forth in faltering and passionate tones, “he knew well; that debil-debil shoot picaninny belonging to him – little girl – ‘poor little girl’ he say. (Here the gray chieftain threw up his arms wildly towards the sky, while hot tears fell from the eyes still glaring with unsated wrath and revenge.) He say, before that he always friend to white fellow – no let black fellow spear cattle.”
“Ask him where he was himself that night,” said Mark.
The inquiry was put to him. Old man Jack replied not for a few moments; then he walked slowly forward to a large hollow log of the slowly-rotting eucalyptus, which had lain for a score of years scarce perceptibly hastening on its path of slow decay. Stooping suddenly, he thrust in his long arm and withdrew a spear. It was mouldering with age, but still showed by its sharpened point and smoothed edges how dangerous a weapon it had been. He felt the point, touched a darkened stain which reached to a foot from the end, and, suddenly throwing himself with lightning-like rapidity into the attitude of a thrower of the javelin, shouted a name thrice with a demoniac malevolence which curdled the hearts of the hearers. He then snapped the decayed lance, and, throwing the pieces at Mark’s feet with a softened and humble gesture, relapsed into his old mute, emotionless manner, and strode away along the border of the lake.
“He say,” concluded Wildduck, with a half confidential manner, “that he spear Red Bob that night with that one spear. He hide ’em in log, and never see it again till this day.”
“Some secrets are well kept,” said Mark. “If it had been known within a few years after the fight, old man Jack would have been shot half a dozen times over. Now, no one would think of avenging Red Bob’s death more than that of Julius Cæsar. After all, it was a fair fight; and I believe old man Jack’s story.”
“Well, I shall never laugh at bush warfare again,” said Maud; “there is sad earnest sufficient for anybody in this tale.”
“We may as well be turning our horses’ heads homeward. Wildduck, you come up to-morrow and get something for your cough.”
“Come up now,” accepted Wildduck, with great promptitude. “Too much frightened of Wanding to-night to stop here.”
A brisk gallop home shook off some of the influences of their somewhat eerie adventure. Maud strove to keep up the lively tone of her ordinary conversation, but did not wholly succeed. Her subdued bearing rendered her, in Jack’s eyes, more irresistible than before. He was rapidly approaching that helpless stage when, in moods of grave or gay, a man sees only the absolute perfection of his exemplar of all feminine graces. From the last pitying glance which Maud bestowed on Wildduck, to the frank kiss which she so lovingly pressed on Mameluke’s neck as she dismounted, Jack only recognized the rare combination of lofty sentiment with a warm and affectionate nature.
Next morning Jack was under marching orders. He had left M‘Nab sufficiently long by himself, in case anything of the nature of work turned up. He had secured an extremely pleasant change from the monotony of home. He had, most undeniably, acquired one or more new ideas. How regretfully he saw Mark finish his breakfast, and wait to say good-bye, preparatory to a long day’s ride after those eternal shepherds!
“You must come and see us again,” said Mrs. Stangrove, properly careful to retain the acquaintance of an agreeable neighbour and an eligible parti. “You have no excuse now. We shall not believe in the use and value of your fencing if it won’t provide you with a little leisure sometimes.”
“You must all come and see me before shearing,” rejoined he. “I shall make a stand on my rights in etiquette, and refuse to come again before you have ‘returned my call,’ as ladies say. I have several novelties beside the fencing to show, which might interest even ladies. I hope you won’t give Stangrove any rest till he promises to bring you.”
“We have a natural curiosity to see all the new world you are reported to have made,” Maud said, “and even your model overseer, Mr. M‘Nab. He must surely be one of the ‘coming race,’ and have any quantity of ‘vril’ at command. I suppose the land will be filled with such products of a higher civilization after we early Arcadians are abolished.”
“You must come and see, Miss Stangrove. I will tell you nothing. M‘Nab is the ideal general-of-division in the grand army of labour, to my fancy. But whether it is to be Waterloo or Walcheren the future must decide. Au revoir!”
He shook hands with Stangrove, and, mounting, departed with his brace of hackneys for the trifling day’s ride between there and home. Truth to tell, he tested the mettle of his steeds much more shrewdly than in his leisurely downward course. It was nearer to eight hours than nine when he reined up before the home-paddock gate of Gondaree.
Returning to one’s own particular abode and domicile is not always an unmixed joy, however much imaginative writers have insisted upon the aspect. “The watchdog’s honest bay” occasionally displays a want of recognition calculated to irritate the sensitive mind. Evidence is sometimes forced upon the unwilling revenant of the proverbial and unwarrantable playing of mice in the absence of the lord of the castle, who is thereby unpleasantly reminded that he occupies substantially the position of the cat. Possibly he is greeted with the unwelcome announcement that an important business interview has lapsed by reason of his absence. It may be that he finds his household absent at an entertainment, thus causing him to moralize upon desolate hearthstones and shattered statuettes, while he is gloomily performing for himself the minor offices so promptly bestowed on more fortunate arrivals. Or fate, being in one of her dark moods – a subtle prescience of evil, only too true – meets him on the threshold, and he enters his home as chief mourner. “Happy whom none of these befall;” and in such cheer did our hero find himself when, after hurried inquiry, it transpired that “nothing had happened,” that everything was going on as well as could be, and that Mr. M‘Nab was out at the woolshed (No. 3), and had left word that he would be in at sundown.
“So everything has gone on well in my absence,” said Jack to his lieutenant, as they sat placidly smoking after the evening meal. “I began to be a little nervous as I got near home, though why it should be I can’t say.”
“So well,” answered M‘Nab, “that if it were not for the woolshed there would be too little to do. Once a month is often enough to muster the paddocks, and the percentage of loss has been very trifling. The sheep are in tip-top condition. The clip will be good and very clean. I hope we are past our troubles.”
“I hope so too,” echoed Jack. “How many sheep are there in the river paddock?”
“Nine thousand odd. You never saw anything like them for condition.”
“Isn’t there a risk in having them there at this time of year? The river might come down; and Stangrove told me the greater part of that paddock is under water in a big flood.”
“Plenty of time to get them out. If the worst came we could soon rig a temporary bridge over the anabranch creek.”
“People about here say,” objected Jack, “that when a real flood comes down all sorts of places are filled which you wouldn’t expect; and sheep are the stupidest things – except pigs – that ever were tried in water and a hurry.”
“You needn’t be uneasy; I’ll have them out of that hours before there is any danger,” said M‘Nab, confidently. “Meanwhile, if they don’t use the feed the travelling stock will only have the benefit of it. What did you think of Mr. Stangrove’s place, sir?”
“I was agreeably surprised,” said Jack, with an air of much gravity. “The whole affair is old-fashioned, of course; but the stock are very good, in fine order, and everything about the place very neat and nice. Mr. Stangrove and his family are exceedingly nice people.”
“So I’ve heard,” said M‘Nab. “So I believe (as if that was a point so unimportant as to merit the merest assent); but the Run! – the run is one of the best and largest on the river, and to think of its being thrown away upon less than twenty thousand sheep, a thousand head of cattle, and a few mobs of rubbishy horses!”
“Dreadful, isn’t it?” said Jack, smiling at M‘Nab’s righteous indignation; “but Stangrove is one of those men who thinks he has a right to do what he wills with his own. And really he has something to say for himself.”
“I can’t think it, sir; I can’t think it,” asserted the stern utilitarian. “The State ought to step in and interfere when a man is clearly wasting and misusing the public lands. I’d give all the shepherding, non-fencing men five years’ warning; if at the end of that time they had not contrived to fence and dig wells the country should be resumed and let by tender to men who would work the Crown lands decently and profitably.”
“You’re rather too advanced a land-reformer,” said his employer. “You might have the tables turned upon you by the farmers. However, you can argue the point of eviction with Mr. Stangrove, who will be here with the ladies, I hope, before shearing. But he has fought for his land once, and I feel sure would do so again if need were. Still I think he will be rather astonished at our four boundary riders.”
The first necessity was an inspection of the new wool-shed, which was raising its unpretending form, like a species of degenerate phœnix, from the ashes of its glorious predecessor. It was strong and substantial, full of necessary conveniences – good enough – but not the model edifice – the exemplar of a district, the pride of Lower Riverina.
Now befell a halcyon time of a couple of months of Jack’s existence, during which the millennium, as far as Gondaree was concerned, seemed to have arrived.
The weather was perfect; there was just enough rain, not more than was needed to “freshen up” the pasture from time to time. There were ten thousand fat sheep; the lambing had commenced, and prospects were splendid.
Better than all, the reactionary reign of economy directly proceeding from M‘Nab’s well-calculated outlay had set in. With forty-two thousand “countable” sheep and twenty thousand lambing ewes, “in full blast,” there were but the four boundary riders, M‘Nab, the cook, and Ah Sing, plus the shed workmen. “This was something like,” Jack said to himself. “Fancy the small army I should have billeted upon me if I were like Stangrove, and had the same proportion of hands to employ. The very thought of it is madness, or insolvency – which comes to the same thing.”
“I really believe we could do with even fewer hands upon a pinch,” said M‘Nab. “Ah Sing is of course a luxury, though a justifiable one. The boundary-riders come in for their own rations, so a ration-carrier is unnecessary. The two that live at the homestead cook for themselves. There is next to no work in the store till shearing; you or I can give out anything that is wanted. The cook chops his own wood, and fetches it in once a week; water is at the door. If it were not for having to convoy travelling sheep, one man could watch and the rest go to sleep till shearing. There are no dingoes, and we have no township near us to breed tame dogs. Next year we must have thirty thousand lambing-sheep by hook or by crook, and then you may put Gondaree into the market with sixty thousand sheep as soon after as you please.”
“What about these ten thousand fat sheep?” said Jack. “Isn’t it time we were thinking of drafting and sending them on the road?”
“If I were you, Mr. Redgrave, I would not sell them, unless you were obliged, till after shearing. They are worth from twelve to fourteen shillings all round in Melbourne, let us say. Well, the wethers will cut six shillings’ worth of wool, and the ewes five. It would pay you to shear them and sell them as store sheep.”
“That’s all very well; but if you don’t sell at the proper time I always notice that it ends in keeping them for another year; by which you lose interest, and risk a fall in the market.”
“Not much chance of sheep falling below ten shillings,” rejoined M‘Nab. “We can send them in very prime about March. We may just as soon make one expense of the shearing.”
“Well,” yielded Jack, “I dare say it won’t make much difference. We shall have it – the clip – and if they only fetch ten shillings there will be a profit of five and twenty per cent. They don’t cost anything for shepherding, that’s one comfort.”
So matters wore on till July. To complete the astonishing success and enjoyment of the situation, Jack received a letter from Stangrove, to say that he was going to drive over, and would bring the ladies for a day’s visit to Gondaree.
Jack’s cup well-nigh overflowed. To think of having her actually in the cottage, under his very roof – to have the happiness of beholding her walking about the garden and homestead, criticising everything, as she would be sure to do. Perhaps even appreciating, with that clear intellect of hers, the scope and breadth of the system of management, of his life pleasures even. Could she be won to take an interest, then what delirious, immeasurable joy!