"But," said William, "you surely are not going to leave your wife and daughter alone, while you go back to the Downs for your flocks? It can't be your intention to leave them unprotected, in this part of the bush? Are you aware of the freedom of the blacks here?"
"No," replied Sawyer, "I don't know much about the blacks in these parts; 'cos I ain't seen much of them yet; but I know just exactly what they were on the Hunter twenty years ago; and I be sure they arn't worse here than they were there; and my old woman has had as much to do with them as me. Do you think I am afraid to leave her by herself? Lord bless you, sir; my word! she is 'all there' to take care of herself; and in her own house I'll back her against any dozen white men and any fifty blacks."
"You are quite at liberty," said John, "if you like, after you have built your huts, to leave your wife and daughter and your stores and things here to await your own return."
"I am obliged to you, young man," exclaimed old Sawyer; "but I'd rather leave them at our own station, and I reckon they would rather stop there themselves; besides if I built my huts, and then left them, the blackguardly blacks would most likely burn them."
"Well, Mr. Sawyer, you can please yourself," replied John, "but you are quite welcome to make use of our place if you like."
"All right, sir," replied he addressed, "I've no doubt; but you see I've no fear of my old woman being alone, so I shall just leave her to bide until I come back. Howsomdever we shan't be long away, and I don't think I shall be so lucky as to find, when I do come back, that anybody has run away with her."
"I trust, Mr. Sawyer," continued John, "you may have no cause to reprehend yourself for your confidence in your wife's ability to protect herself and her daughter; and, if we can be of any service to them, I trust you will make no scruple in commanding us; for we desire to live on terms of amity with our neighbours, and it is essential to be mutually obliging at times."
"In course, young fellow; you are a brick, so give me your hand," cried the head of the Sawyer family, as he started to his feet, "we must have a nobbler on the strength of that;" saying which he abstracted a bottle from the breastine recesses of his garments, and handed it to John, who called to Joey to bring some pannikins and water.
"I must apologize," said he, "for not offering you a glass of grog myself before this; but, to tell you the truth, we have not got any on the station, and here we don't usually drink it; but to keep you company, I don't mind taking a small drop."
The bottle was handed to Mr. Wigton, William, and the women in succession; the two former of whom declined, and the latter partook; while the dispenser himself filled out a jorum for his personal libation, and drank success to himself, and the world generally, in that comprehensive aphorism which seemed to him to answer for all occasions; viz., "here's luck." He felt disappointed, however, when, upon a second presentation of the "homiletical stimulator," he found no one to join him, and he remarked with an apparent degree of truth: