“I don’t want to fool about, old chap,” he had said. “I want to see something of the real thing.”
“Thought you would, Dick,” had been the answer. “Well, I see we’re going to make a real up-country man of you before we’ve done.”
Thinking over these things Greenoak sat. Then deciding that Dick would be returning from the ship about now, he concluded to stroll down and meet him.
He left the club. From the steep hill leading down to Main Street there was a view of the bay and the shipping, the homeward-bound liner flying the blue peter and sending up a thickening volume of smoke, while away behind the Winterhoek mountains rose soft and hazy against the unclouded sky.
“Hi!—hallo, Greenoak,” and a hand dropped on his shoulder from behind; but he did not start, his nerves were in far too good training for that. He only stopped.
“That you, Simcox? How are you?”
The man thus addressed was about Greenoak’s own age, hard, wiry, weather-beaten. A typical colonist of the downright rough-and-ready type. Now he exclaimed:
“Well, this is a surprise. And what brings you down here?”
The other told him.
“Rum thing, isn’t it,” he said with a laugh, “that at my time of life I should start out in the bear-leading line? Well, this is a particularly nice young chap, so that the job’s likely to turn out ‘clovery’ all round.”