money can do for you as at the present moment. Look here!' As he spoke
Ted drew a pocketbook out of his breast coat-pocket, and extracted from
it a sheet of pale pink note-paper. 'There's your I O U for five
shillings you lost to me at euchre last December twelve-months. That
night, after I got home, I said to Larry I would keep this bit of paper
till everything I had was yours. And now it is; and yet what can I do
for you? Instead of flying round with me on a drag with proper
thoroughbred horses when you go to places, you pick out a hansom with
the screwiest brute you can see, so that you may go slow and give the
animal a spell. And as for jewels or dresses, why, you don't spend
nearly your own money, and you've never touched any of your
settlements.'
'Well, now I am going to ask you for something, Ted. Is all you have
really mine?'
'Well, you just try!'
'Give me two hundred acres of Strathhaye.'
'But the whole eighty thousand is yours.'
'Oh, that is too much. Give me two hundred acres to cut up into little
farms----'
'Good Lord!' cried Ted, starting up with such a look of horror that
Stella fairly smiled. 'But you're only making game of me, Stella! You
are not serious! and is it some of the paupers you want to put there?'
he cried, a new light breaking in on him.
'Yes; some of the people who come up from the country hoping to get
work.'
'But to put them on Strathhaye, Stella? You'd hate the look of them in
no time. Oh, I know the sort of farmers they make, with awful whales of
horses it would turn a fellow sick to look at, and machinery lying about
without even a shed to cover it! No, no, Stella! While you're feeling
rather low and going to church so much, you fancy you would like to do
this; but to fix them on your own estate instead of well-bred merinoes!
You'd be disgusted with them in no time.'
'Well, Ted, you are only judging me by my past character, I know.'
'Now, Stella, don't begin to talk of yourself in such a fashion. Your
character indeed!'
'Why, haven't I got any?' said Stella, smiling once again.
'Not in that way. You hear precious little about people's characters
till they want to make themselves out better or worse than they are.
When you want to speak against yourself you must find someone that knows
a little less about you.'
'Well, I did think that with such a large freehold estate----' said
Stella slowly.
'Now, I'll tell you what I'll do,' said Ted suddenly. 'There's two
hundred and fifty acres of good agricultural land to be in the market
next January, at Caradoc, about fifteen miles away from Strathhaye.
I'll buy it for you, every acre, and you can put the paupers there.'
'Don't call them paupers, Ted. The Schulz family in Berlin, and others
like them in London, self-respecting, thrifty people, but with such
heavy odds against them that they must go to the wall in the Old
World--these are the kind of families we should help.'
It was a long time since Ritchie had heard Stella speak with so much
animation.
'Well, you know you have a lot of money of your own to do what you like
with,' he began.
'It will be an investment,' answered Stella.
'At first you'd better make up your mind to lose four per cent.,' put in
Ted.
'No, I won't lose,' she answered confidently. 'You see, you don't know
the people, Ted.'
'That just reminds me of what you said once when you were telling me a
yarn up in the Moreton Bay fig-tree at Fairacre. It's ages ago, when
you were about thirteen----'
'Oh, Ted!--so long ago as that?'
'Well, it's eleven years ago. You used to sit in the fork of the tree
with your back against the trunk, with a book; and I would tease you
till you told me a story; and sometimes you would make it so creepy I
was sorry I asked for it. This time--I remember it well, because it was
a week before your father died,' said Ted, lowering his voice--'you
looked down towards the sea, and you said there was a ship sailing,
sailing away, and at last it came to the strangest country. The people
had such small souls that at the Day of Judgment they couldn't be found.
The Lord sent squads of angels to look for them, but not one could they
fossick out. And there the skeletons had to sit each on its own grave,
and the moonlight playing through their bones. That was the only light,
and not a blade of grass or a drop of water!'
'Oh, Ted!--are you sure I told you all that?' said Stella incredulously.
'Why, who else could ever think of such things?' returned Ted with
assured confidence. 'There was never a sound to be heard but when a big
willy-willy went rushing over the valleys--it was all valleys, full of
graves, with skeletons sitting on them, waiting for the souls that
couldn't be found. When the storms blew, the air was thick with bones,
driven here and there, and at last left in heaps, to get together as
well as they could. They used to be so tired and bruised for a long
time, they could not move. But at last they began to put themselves
together. And that was the only time they could speak. "You have taken
part of my backbone," one would say to the other; "This rib doesn't
belong to me;" "I am all here but my left leg;" "Who has got my skull?"
That last was too much for me. I said, if the skull was missing, the
skeleton couldn't speak. But you said I knew nothing about the country.
I had never been there. And not only so, but the bone of the little toe
could speak far better than a skull. That put the "kybosh" on me
completely.'
'You have got a curious memory, Ted,' said Stella, who had listened with
languid wonder to this recital. 'You never seem to remember much of
books you read.'
'No; but you tell me things out of them, and I'll remember fast enough.
You'll have to come back to that, Stella--keep a school with only me....
Is that a letter from Larry?'
'Yes; but I do not think I can let you read it,' answered Stella, taking
it up. She was thankful that she had resisted the impulse which had
come over her in connection with it. 'They will be in London next
month--and, Ted, it may seem selfish to take you away from England when
the racing season is at its height, but I want to get away before Larry
comes.'
'I'll take you to-morrow wherever you wish to go, Stella,' answered Ted.
'All these months I've been perfectly sick of being able to do nothing
for you. As for racing, I told you more than a year ago I was getting
full up of it.'
A fortnight later they left for Switzerland, and sailed for Australia
early in November.
THE END.
BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD
_St. de Hy._