“The crackling embers glow,
And flakes of hideous smoke the skies defile.”—_Crabbe._
“There is accommodation for more shearers than we shall need this year,”
said M‘Nab, apologetically, “but it is as well to do the thing
thoroughly. Next year I hope we shall have fifty thousand to shear, and
if you go in for some back country I don’t see why there shouldn’t be a
hundred thousand sheep on the board before you sell out. That will be a
sale worth talking about. Meanwhile, there’s nothing like plenty of room
in a shed. The wool will be all the better this year even for it.”
“I know it has cost a frightful lot of money,” said Jack, pensively,
practising a gentle gallop on the smooth, pale-yellow, aromatic-scented
floor. “I dare say it will be a pleasure to shear in it, and all
that—but it’s spoiled a thousand pounds one way or the other.”
“What’s a thousand pounds?” said M‘Nab, with a sort of gaze that seemed
as though he were piercing the mists of futurity, and seeing an unbroken
procession of tens of thousands of improved merinos marching slowly and
impressively on to the battens, ready to deliver three pounds and a-half
of spout-washed wool at half-a-crown a pound. “When you come to add a
penny or twopence a pound to a large clip, all the money you can spend
in a wash-pen, or a shed, is repaid in a couple of years. Of course I
mean when things are on a large scale.”
“Well, we’re spending money on a large scale,” said Jack. “I only hope
the returns and profits will be in the same proportion.”
“Not a doubt of it,” said M‘Nab. “I must be off home to meet the
fencers.”
The shed was locked up, and they drove home. As they alighted, three men
were standing at the door of the store, apparently waiting for the
“dole”—a pound of meat and a pannikin of flour, which is now found to be
the reasonable minimum, given to every wayfarer by the dwellers in
Riverina, wholly irrespective of caste, colour, indisposition to work,
or otherwise, “as the case may be.”
Jack went into the house to prepare for dinner, while M‘Nab, looking
absently at the men, took out a key and made towards the entrance to the
store.
“Stop,” cried M‘Nab, “didn’t I see you three men on the road to-day,
about four miles off? Which way have you come?”
“We’re from down the river,” said one of the fellows, a voluble,
good-for-nothing, loafing impostor, a regular “coaster” and “up one side
of the river and down the other” traveller, as the men say, asking for
work, and praying, so long as food and shelter are afforded, that he may
not get it. “We’ve been looking for work this weeks, and I’m sure,
sliding into an impressive low-tragedy growl, the ’ardships men ’as to
put up with in this country—a-travellin’ for work—no one can’t imagine.”
“I dare say not,” said M‘Nab; “it’s precious little you fellows know of
hardships, fed at every station you come to, taking an easy day’s walk,
and not obliged to work unless the employment thoroughly suits you. How
far have you come to-day?”
There was a slight appearance of hesitation and reference to each other
as the spokesman answered—“From Dickson’s, a station about fifteen miles
distant.”
“You are telling me a lie,” said M‘Nab, wrathfully. “I saw you sitting
down on your swags this morning at the crossing-place, five miles from
here, and the hut-keeper on the other side of the river told me you had
been there all night and had only just left.”
“Well, suppose we did,” said another one, who had not yet spoken,
“there’s no law to make a man walk so many miles a day, like travelling
sheep. I dare say the squatters would have that done if they could. Are
you going to give us shelter here to-night, or no?”
“I’ll see you hanged first!” broke forth M‘Nab, indignantly; “what, do
you talk about _shelter_ in weather like this! A rotten tree is too good
a lodging for a set of lazy, useless scoundrels, who go begging from
station to station at the rate of five miles a day.”
“We did not come far to-day, it is true,” said the third traveller,
evidently a foreigner; “but we have a far passage to-morrow. Is it not
so, _mes camarades_?”
“Far enough, and precious short rations too, sometimes,” growled the man
who had spoken last. “I wish some coves had a taste on it themselves.”
“See here, my man,” said M‘Nab, going close up to the last speaker, and
looking him full in the eye, “if you don’t start at once I’ll kick you
off the place, and pretty quickly too.”
The man glared savagely for a moment, but, seeing but little chance of
coming off best in an encounter with a man in the prime of youth and
vigour, gave in, and sullenly picked up his bundle.
The Frenchman, for such he was, turned for a moment, and fixing a small
glittering eye—cold and serpentine—upon M‘Nab, said—
“It is then that you refuse us a morsel of food, the liberty to lie on
the hut floor?”
“There is the road,” repeated M‘Nab; “I will harbour no impostors or
loafers.”
“I have the honour to wish you good-evening,” said the Frenchman, bowing
with exaggerated politeness; “a pleasant evening, and dreams of the
best.”
The men went slowly on their way. M‘Nab went into the cottage, by no
means too well satisfied with himself. A feeling of remorse sprang up
within his breast. “Hang the fellows!” said he to himself, “it serves
them right. Still I am going in to a comfortable meal and my bed, while
these poor devils will most probably have neither. That Frenchman didn’t
seem a crawler either, though I didn’t like the expression of his eye as
he moved away. They’ll make up for it at Jook-jook to-morrow. Why need
they have told me that confounded lie? then they would have been treated
well. However, it can’t be helped. If we don’t give them a lesson now
and then the country will get full of fellows who do nothing but consume
rations, and fair station work will become impossible.”
Early next morning—it was Sunday, by the way—Jack was turning round for
another hour’s snooze, an indulgence to which he deemed himself fairly
entitled after a hard week’s work, when Mr. M‘Nab’s voice (_he_ was
always up and about early, whatever might be the day of the week) struck
strangely upon his ear. He was replying to one of the station hands; he
caught the words—“The shed! God in heaven—you can’t mean it!” Jack was
out of bed with one bound, and, half clad, rushed out. M‘Nab was
saddling a horse with nervous hands that could scarcely draw a buckle.
“What is it, man?” demanded Redgrave, with a sinking at the heart, and a
strange presentiment of evil.
“The wool-shed’s a-fire, sir!” answered the man, falteringly, “and I
came in directly I seen it to let you know.”
“On fire! and why didn’t you try and put it out?” inquired he, hoarsely,
“there were plenty of you about there.”
He was hoping against hope, and was scarcely surprised when the man
said, in a tone as nearly modulated to sympathy as his rough utterance
could be subdued to—
“The men are hard at it, sir, but I’m afraid——”
Jack did not wait for the conclusion of the sentence, but made at once
for the loose-box where his hack had been lately bestowed at night, and
in a couple of minutes was galloping along the lately-worn “wool-shed
track” at some distance behind M‘Nab, who was racing desperately ahead.
Before he reached the creek upon which the precious and indispensable
building had been, after much careful planning erected, he saw the great
column of smoke rising through the still morning air, and knew that all
was lost. He knew that the pine timber, of which it was chiefly
composed, would burn “like a match,” and that if not stifled at its
earliest commencement all the men upon the Warroo could not have
arrested its progress. As he galloped up a sufficiently sorrowful sight
met his eye. The shearers, washers, and some other provisional hands,
put on in anticipation of the unusual needs of shearing time, were
standing near the fiercely-blazing structure, with fallen roof and
charred uprights, which but yesterday had been the best wool-shed on the
Warroo. The deed was done. There was absolutely no hope, no opportunity
of saving a remnant of the value of five pounds of the whole costly
building.
“How, in the name of all that’s—” said he to M‘Nab, who was gazing
fixedly beyond the red smouldering mass, as if his ever-working mind was
already busied beyond the immediate disaster, “did the fire originate?
It was never accidental. Then who could have had the smallest motive to
do us such an injury?”
“I am afraid I have too good a guess,” answered M‘Nab. “But of that by
and by. Did you see any strange men camp here last night?” he asked of
the crowd generally.
“Travellers?” said one of the expectant shearers. “Yes, there was three
of ’em came up late and begged some rations. I was away after my horse
as made off. When I found him and got back it was ten o’clock at night,
and these coves was just making their camp by the receiving-yard.”
“What like were they?”
“Two biggish chaps—one with a beard, and a little man, spoke like a
’Talian or a Frenchman.”
“Did they say anything?”
“Well, one of them—the long chap—began to run you down; but the
Frenchman stopped him, and said you was too good to ’em altogether.”
“Who saw the shed first?”
“I did, sir,” said one of the fencers. “I turned out at daylight to get
some wood, when the fust thing I saw was the roof all blazin’ and part
of it fell in. I raised a shout and started all the men. We tried
buckets, but, lor’ bless you, when we come to look, the floor was all
burned through and through.”
“Then you think it had been burning a good while?” asked Jack, now
beginning to understand the drift of the examination.
“Hours and hours, sir,” answered the man; “from what we see, the fire
started under where the floor joins the battens; there was a lot of
shavings under the battens, and some of them hadn’t caught when we came.
It was there the fire began sure enough.”
“Did any one see the strange men leave?” asked M‘Nab, with assumed
coolness, though his lip worked nervously, and his forehead was drawn
into deep wrinkles.
“Not a soul,” said another of the hands. “I looked over at their camp as
we rushed out, and it was all cleared out, and no signs of ’em.”
John Redgrave and his manager rode back very sadly to Steamboat Point
that quiet Sunday morn. The day was fair and still, with the added
silence and hush which long training communicates to the mere idea of
the Sabbath day.
The birds called strangely, but not unmusically, from the pale-hued
trees but lately touched with a softer green. The blue sky was
cloudless. Nature was kindly and serene. Nothing was incongruous with
her tranquil and tender aspect but the stern, tameless heart of man.
They maintained for some time a dogged silence. The loss was bitter. Not
only had rather more money been spent upon the building than was quite
advisable or convenient, but the whole comfort, pride, and perhaps
profit, of the shearing would be lost.
“Those infernal scoundrels,” groaned M‘Nab; “that snake of a Frenchman,
with his beady black eyes. I thought the little brute meant mischief,
though I never dreamed of this, or I’d have gone and slept in the shed
till shearing was over. I’ll have them in gaol before a week’s over
their heads, but what satisfaction is there in that? It’s my own fault
in great part. I ought to have known better, and not have been so hard
on them.”
“I was afraid,” said Jack, “that you were a little too sharp with these
fellows of late. I know, too, what they are capable of. But no one could
have foreseen such an outrage as this. The next thing to consider is how
to knock up a rough makeshift that we can shear in.”
“That doesn’t give me any trouble,” answered the spirit-stricken M‘Nab;
“we could do as we did last year; but the season is a month forwarder,
and we shall have the burrs and grass-seed in the wool as sure as fate.
But for that, I shouldn’t so much care.”
M‘Nab departed gloomily to his own room, refusing consolation, and spent
the rest of the day writing circulars containing an accurate description
of the suspected ones to every police-station within two hundred miles.
Then it came to pass that the three outlaws were soon snapped up by a
zealous sergeant, “on suspicion of having committed a felony,” and
safely lodged in Bochara gaol. There did they abide for several weary
months, until the Judge of the Circuit Court was graciously pleased to
come and try them.
The loss in the first instance was sufficiently great. The labour of
many men for nearly a year; every nail, every ounce of iron contained in
the large building had been brought from Melbourne; the sawyers’ bill
was considerable. Twice had the men employed to put on the shingles
deserted, and the finishing of the roof was regarded by the anxious
M‘Nab as a kind of miracle. The sliding doors, the portcullises, the
hundreds of square feet of battening, the circular drafting-yard; all
the very latest appliances and improvements, united to very solid and
perfect construction, made an unusual though costly success. And now, to
see it wasted, and worse than wasted. “It is enough to make one believe
in bad luck, Mr. Redgrave!” said Mr. M‘Nab, who had just quitted his
bedroom.
“I am afraid it means bad luck for this season,” pursued he; “our wool
will be got up only middling, and if prices take a turn downward it will
be very puzzling to say what the damage done by this diabolical act of
arson will amount to.”
“We must hope for the best,” said Jack, who, feeling things very keenly
at the time, had a great dislike to the protracted torture which
dwelling upon misfortunes always inflicts upon men of his organization.
“The deed is done. To-morrow we must rig up a second edition of last
year’s proud edifice.”
The sheep were shorn, certainly. Mr. Redgrave did not exactly permit the
crop of delicate, creamy, serrated, elastic, myriad-threaded material to
be torn off by the salt-bushes, or to become ragged and patchy on the
sheeps’ backs. But the pleasure and pride of the toilsome undertaking,
the light and life of the pastoral harvest, were absent. There was a
total absence of rain; so there was a good deal of unavoidable dust. The
men could not be got to take the ordinary amount of pains; so the work
was thoroughly unsatisfactory. Then, in spite of all the haste and
indifferent workmanship purposely overlooked by M‘Nab, the grass-seed
and clover-burr ripened only too rapidly, and the ewes and lambs, coming
last, were choke-full of it. The lower part of every fleece was like a
nutmeg-grater with the hard, unyielding, hooked and barbed tentacles.
M‘Nab groaned in spirit as he saw all this unnecessary damage, which he
was powerless to prevent, and again and again cursed the hasty word and
lack of self-control which, as he fully believed, had indirectly caused
this never-ending mischief.
“A thousand for the shed, and another thousand for damage to wool,” said
he one day, as he flung one of these last porcupine-looking fleeces with
a disgusted air into a rude wool-bin made of hurdles placed on end.
“It’s enough to make a man commit suicide. I feel as if I ought to walk
to Melbourne with peas in my boots.”
“Never mind, M‘Nab,” said Jack, consolingly; “as I said before, the
thing is done and over, and we may make ourselves miserable, and so
injure our thought and labour fund. But that won’t build the shed again.
Luckily the sheep are all right—they couldn’t burn them. I never saw a
better lot of lambs, and the numbers are getting up to the fifty
thousand I once proposed as a limit. What’s the total count we have
passed through?”
“Forty-one thousand seven hundred and eighty,” answered M‘Nab, who
always had anything connected with numerals at his fingers’ ends. “We
have bought several small lots since last year, and the lambing average
was very high. Of course the lambs don’t actually count till weaning
time.”
“Well, we must only hope for a good season,” said Jack, “and for wool
and prices to keep up. Then, perhaps, the loss of the shed won’t be so
telling. We ought to have a good many fat sheep to sell in the winter.”
“So we shall,” said M‘Nab, “nearly ten thousand—counting the
full-mouthed and cull ewes. Then we shall have lambs from nearly sixteen
thousand ewes next year. I hope the season will not fail us, now the
paddocks are all finished.”
“Well, it _does_ look rather dry,” admitted Jack; “so early in the year
too. But then it always looks dry here when it doesn’t rain. I shall
have to run away to Melbourne now, and arrange whether to sell or ship
this only moderately well-got-up wool of ours. I must have another
interview with Mr. Shrood. It has been all spending and no returns of
late.”
Shearing being over—how differently concluded to what he had fondly
anticipated! Jack hied himself to town for his annual holiday. It did
not wear so much the air of a festival this year. There seemed to be a
flavour of stern business about it; much more than Jack liked.
The wool-market was by no means in so buoyant a condition as that of
last year. The faces of his brother squatters, especially those of the
more enterprizing among them, wore a serious and elongated expression.
Ugly reports went about as to a probable fall in wool and stock. Jack
found his indifferently got-up clip quite unsaleable in the colonial
market. He therefore shipped it at once, taking a fair advance thereon.
Freight, too, was unreasonably high that year. Everything seemed against
a fellow.
He went in for the little interview with Mr. Mildmay Shrood, and thought
that affable money-changer less agreeable than of yore. “He wanted to
know, you know.” He asked a series of questions, testifying a desire to
have the clearest idea of Jack’s stock, value of property, liabilities,
and probable expenditure during the coming year. He dwelt much upon the
unfortunate destruction of the wool-shed; asked for an estimate of the
cost of another; looked rather grave at the account of the get-up of the
clip, and the necessity for shipping the same. However, the concluding
portion of the interview was more reassuring.
“Of course you will continue to draw as usual, my dear sir; but I may
say, in confidence, that in commercial circles a fall in prices is very
generally anticipated.”
“There may be a temporary decline,” rejoined Jack, candidly, “but it is
impossible that it should be lasting. As for sheep, the stock are not at
present in the country to enable us to keep up with the demand,
especially since these meat-preserving establishments have commenced
operations.”
“Quite so, my dear sir, quite so,” assented Mr. Shrood, looking
paternally at him and rubbing his hands, “I am quite of your
opinion; but some of our directors have doubts—have doubts. Would
you mind looking in before you go—say in a week or two? Thanks.
Good-day—good-day.”
Jack attended the wool-sales pretty regularly, and saw the clips which
were undeniably well got up sell at good prices, in spite of the general
dullness of the market. The clip was an unusually heavy one, and every
day’s train brought down trucks upon trucks of bales, as if the interior
of Australia was one colossal wool-store, just being emptied at the
command of an enchanter. But the “heavy and moity” parcels were not
touched by the cautious operators at any price. So Jack groaned in
spirit, doubting that he might come in for a low market at home, and
knowing that he would have saved himself but for the woful work of the
incendiaries. He did not derive much comfort from the daring spirits
whose early and successful ventures had inspired him with the first
ideas of changing his district. They walked about like people who owned
a private bank, but upon which bank there happened to be, at present, a
run. They were, as a rule, men far too resolute to give in during
adversity, or the threatening of any, how wild soever, commercial
tempest. Still they looked sternly defiant, as who should say—“to bear
is to conquer our fate.” Jack did not enjoy the probabilities. These
were brass pots of approved strength for floating in the eddying
financial torrents. Might not he, an earthen vessel, meet with deadly
damage, fatal cracks, irrevocable immersion, in their company? “_Que
diable allait-il faire dans cette galère?_”
He sent up his stores, making a close calculation as to quantity. There
would not be so many men required after this shearing. The paddocks were
all finished, and few hands would be needed. Then he had doors and
windows, and hinges and nails, and tons of galvanized iron for roofing
for the shed—all over again. Confound it! Just as a fellow was hoping to
get a little straight. Jack _did_ feel very unchristian. However, it was
as necessary as tea and sugar—that is, if he ever intended to get a
decent price for his wool again. Somewhat earlier in the season than
usual, Jack commenced to revolve the question of a start. Then he
bethought himself of Mr. Mildmay Shrood.
“I wonder what he wanted to see me for?” asked Jack of his inner
consciousness; “very civil, friendly little fellow he is. I suspect my
over-draft is pretty heavy just now. But the fencing is all done, that’s
a blessing. And forty thousand sheep and a first-class run are good
security for more money than I’m ever likely to owe.”
So Mr. Redgrave hied away to the grand freestone portals which guarded
the palace of gold and silver, and the magic paper which gladdeneth the
heart of man, who reflecteth not that it is but a fiction—a “baseless
fabric”—an unsubstantial presentment of the potentiality of boundless
wealth.
Mr. Shrood was examining papers when he was ushered into the sacred
parlour, and looked rather more like the dragon in charge of the
treasure than the careless, openhanded financier of Jack’s previous
experience, whose sole business in life seemed to be to provide
cheque-books _ad infinitum_ with graceful indifference. As he ran his
eye down column after column of figures, his brow became corrugated, his
jaw became set, and his face gradually assumed an expression of hardness
and obstinacy.
Throwing down the last of the papers, and clearing his brow with sudden
completeness, he shook hands affectionately with Jack, and gently
anathematized the papers for their tediousness and stupidity.
“Awfully wearing work, Mr. Redgrave, this looking over the accounts of a
large estate. I feel as fatigued as if I had been at it all night. How
are you, and when do you leave?”
“I think the day after to-morrow,” said Jack. “I’m really tired of town,
and wish to get home again.”
“Tired of the town, and of all its various pleasures,” asked Mr. Shrood,
“at your age? Well, of course you are anxious to be at work again—very
creditable feeling. By the way, _by_ the way, now I think of it—you
haven’t encumbered your place by mortgage or in any other way during the
last year, have you?”
“Sir,” replied Jack, with dignity, “I regard my property as pledged in
honour to your bank, by which I have been treated hitherto with
liberality and confidence. I trust that our relations may continue
unaltered.”
“Certainly, my dear sir, certainly,” replied Mr. Mildmay Shrood, with an
air of touching generosity. “Precisely my own view. I trust you will
have no cause to regret your connection with our establishment. But I
have not concealed from you my opinion that, financially, there exists a
certain anxiety—premature in my view of events—but still distinct, as to
the relations between stock and capital. I have been requested by my
directors, to whose advice I am constrained to defer, to raise the point
of security in those instances where advances, I may say considerable
advances, have been made by us. You see my position, I feel sure.”
“Oh, certainly,” said Jack; “of course,” not seeing exactly what he was
driving at.
“You will not, therefore, feel that it amounts to any want of confidence
on the part of the bank,” continued Mr. Shrood, with reassuring
explanation in every tone, “if I name to you the formal execution of a
mortgage over your station, as a mere matter in the ordinary routine of
business, for the support of our advances to you past and future?”
“Oh, no,” replied Jack, with a slight gulp, misliking the sound of the
strictly legal and closely comprehensive instrument, which he had always
associated with ruined men and falling fortunes hitherto. “I suppose
it’s a necessary precaution when the mercantile barometer is low. I
shall be able to draw for necessary expenses as usual, and all that?”
Mr. Shrood smiled, as if anything to the contrary was altogether too
chimerical and beyond human imagination to be considered seriously for
one moment.
“My dear sir,” he proceeded, “I hope you have never had reason to doubt
our readiness to follow your suggestions hitherto. We have unbounded
confidence in your management and discretion. As we have reached this
point, however, would you mind executing the deed which has been
prepared in anticipation of your consent, and concluding this, I
confess, slightly unpleasing section of our arrangements while we are
agreed on the subject, to which I hope not to be compelled again to
recur.”
“Not at all,” replied Jack, “not at all,” feeling like the man at the
dentist’s, as if the tooth might as well be pulled out now as hereafter.
“Thank you; these things are best carried through at one sitting. Pray
excuse me for one moment. Mr. Smith!” Here a junior appeared. “Will you
bring in that—a—legal document, for Mr. Redgrave’s signature, and
a—attend to witness his signature? Your present liability to the bank,
Mr. Redgrave,” he explained, as the young gentleman disappeared,
“amounts to, I think, fifteen thousand pounds in round numbers—that is,
fourteen thousand nine hundred and eighty-seven pounds fourteen and
ninepence. I think you mentioned forty thousand sheep as the stock, was
it not, at present depasturing on the station?”
“Forty-two—some odd hundreds,” answered Jack, “but that is near enough.”
Here Mr. Smith reappeared, with an imposing-looking piece of parchment,
commencing “Know all men by these presents,” which was handed to Jack
for his entertainment and perusal. Jack glanced at it. Nobody, save a
North Briton or a very misanthropical person, ever does read a deed
through, that I know of. But Jack knew enough of such matters to pick
out heedfully the principal clauses which concerned him. It was like
most other compilations of a like nature, and contained, apart from
unmeaning repetitions and exasperating surplusage, certain lucid
sentences, which Jack understood to mean that he was to pay up the said
few thousands at his convenience, or in _default_ to yield up Gondaree,
with stock thereto attached, to the paternal but irresponsible
“money-mill,” under the wildly improbable circumstance of his being
unable to clear off such advances in years to come—with principal and
interest.
“Forty-two thousand sheep, and station, at a pound,” said Jack to
himself, “leave a considerable margin; so I needn’t bother myself. Here
goes. It will never be acted upon—that is one comfort.”
So the name of John Redgrave was duly appended, and Mr. Smith wrote his
name as witness without the least embarrassment. He regarded squatters
who required accommodation as patients subject to mild attacks of
epidemic disease, which usually gave way to proper medical, that is to
say financial, treatment. Occasionally the patient succumbed. That
however was not _his_ affair. Let them all find it out for themselves.
He had many a time and oft envied the bronzed squatter lounging in on a
bright morning, throwing down a cheque and stuffing the five-pound notes
carelessly into his waistcoat-pocket. But, young as he was, he had more
than once seen a careworn, grizzled man waiting outside the bank
parlour, with ill-concealed anxiety for the interview which was to tell
him whether or not he went forth a ruined and hopelessly broken man.
Nothing could have been more soothing than the manner in which the whole
operation of the mortgage had been performed. Still it _was_ an
operation, and Jack felt a sensation difficult to describe, but tending
towards the conviction that he was not quite the same man as he had been
previously. He was not in his usual spirits at dinner that evening,
though of his two sharers of that well-cooked, yet not extravagant
repast, Hautley had ordered it, and Jerningham was by odds the neatest
talker then in town. The wine somehow wasn’t like last week’s. Must have
opened a new batch. He had no luck at billiards. He sat moodily in an
arm-chair in the smoking-room, and heard not some of the best (and least
charitable) things going. He mooned off to bed, out of harmony with
existing society.
“What the dickens is up with Redgrave?” asked little Prowler of old
Snubham, of the Indian Irregular Force. “He looks as black as thunder,
and hasn’t a word to say for himself.”
“A very fine trait in a man’s character,” growled Snubham; “half the
people one meets jabber everlastingly, Heaven knows. What would be the
matter with him? Proposed to some girl, and is afraid she’ll accept him.
A touch of liver, perhaps. Nothing else _can_ happen to a man at the
present day, sir.”
“Must be a woman, I think; he was awful spoony on Dolly Drosera. He’s
too rich to want money,” said Prowler, with a reverential awe of the
squatter proper.
“Humph! don’t know—wool’s down, I believe. He pays up at loo. Beyond
that I have no curiosity. Very ungentlemanlike thing, curiosity.
Mornin’, Prowler.”