"Then what will you do?"
"Stay at the mine for the time being."
"Oh, but the mine won't last forever. And dear boy, don't waste your talents and your charm mining, when it is no longer necessary! Oh, do come down to Perth, and bring your family. Mary is pining to see your twins: and dear Monica. Of course we all are."
Jack smiled to himself. He would no longer give in a hair's breadth to any of these dreary world-people.
"À la bonne heure!" he said, using one of his mother's well-worn tags. But then his mother could rattle bad colloquial French, and he couldn't.
Mary asked him many questions about the mine and Monica, and Hilda Blessington listened with lowered head, only occasionally fixing him with queer searching eyes, like some odd creature not quite human. Jack was something of a hero. And he was pleased. He wanted to be a hero.
But he was no hero any more for Aunt Matilda. Now that the cherub look had gone forever, and the shy, blushing, blurting boy had turned into a hard-boned, healthy young man, with a half haughty aloofness and a little reckless smile that made you feel uncomfortable, she was driven to venting some venom on him.
"That is the worst of the colonies," she said from her bluish powdered face. "Our most charming, cultured young men go out to the back of beyond, and they come home quite—quite—"
"Quite what, Marm?"
"Why I was going to say uncouth, but that's perhaps a little strong."