“By Jove! We hold half our names in common. We are both ‘Sells,’ but there we branch off—ho—ho! Sellon and Selwood, both ‘Sells,’” repeated Chris, who was fond of a joke.
An unimportant, not to say trivial remark. But like many such, it was destined in the fulness of time to be brought back pretty vividly to the memory of its originator and his hearers.
Violet acknowledged the introduction with a queenly sort of bow, and turning preceded them into the sitting-room.
“Where’s Mr Fanning?” she asked, rising almost as soon as she was seated. “I must go and say ‘How do you do?’ to him.”
Sellon muttered an oath to himself as she slipped from the room, not loud enough to be heard by his host, however, who proceeded to ply him with questions as to his journey—and brandy-and-water.
Meanwhile Violet, in pursuance of her expressed intent, was greeting the other arrival with a pretty cordiality that was perfection itself, and when she tuned her voice to the requisite minor key as she asked all manner of questions and expressed all manner of sympathy with regard to his late illness, and whether he ought to have undertaken such a long journey so soon, and if he had taken great care of himself during the same, the effect on her victim was such a reaction from his first feeling of dismay at her non-appearance that he could have thrown up his hat and hoorayed aloud. Whereby we fear it is only too obvious that friend Renshaw was as big a fool as the general run of his fellow-men.
“Well, and what do you think of this country, Mr Sellon?” came the inevitable query, as they were gathered together after the first fuss and flurry of greeting.
“I think various things, Mrs Selwood,” was the ready reply. “Parts of it are lovely, and parts of it are grand, and one gets a fine opportunity of seeing it all during a fortnight’s journey behind three horses. But other parts, on the other hand, and notably the latitudes inhabited by friend Fanning here, reminded me forcibly of the Yankee’s reply to the same question.”
“And what was that?”
“Why, he was travelling in that awful Karroo during a drought, and somebody asked him what he thought of the country, ‘What do I think of your country?’ says he. ‘See here, stranger, if I owned a section of your country I guess I’d enclose that section well around, and send out for a paint-pot and paint it green.’”