Luck at the Diamond Fields

by Dalrymple J. Belgrave

“Shouldn’t have thought they’d have stood much of that sort of thing here,” said Marshall. “We have our faults, and perhaps our weaknesses, but I never would have said snobbishness was one of them.”

“Well, we are a very ‘English community,’ as they are always saying in the papers. Besides, this fellow Ferriard makes himself infernally pleasant to every one, and half the fellows in the camp think they are going to get something out of him. Says that he has been turning his attention to the city and financial business lately, and that now he is out here he may as well take a look round and see what investments are sticking out. That makes him popular, you bet. He says he sees that Fools’ Rush might be turned into a company, and floated as a big thing on the London markets. Thinks there is a fortune for any one who would buy up the shares in the Diddler Diamond Mining Company. He is going to make home capital flow into the place, and every one is to be better off even than they were in the wildest days of the share mania. Then he is very friendly to every one—asks you to stay with him at Melton the first winter you are in England, before he has known you for an hour. And tells you about the shooting he will give you in Norfolk, and his moor in Scotland. The men all swear by him, and the women think that there never was any one like him, confound him!”

“You don’t appear to like him, Joe, as much as the rest of ’em do,” said Marshall, after he had listened to his friend’s unusually long speech.

“Like him! I think him an infernal outsider; but I see he has settled down to play at poker, so I will go down to the Shorts’, as he won’t be hanging about there making himself a nuisance, as he generally does of an evening.”

“Does Polly Short find him such a nuisance then? Looks the sort of man who could make himself pretty agreeable.”

Warton answered by a growl rather than by any articulate speech, and George Marshall laughed to himself. It was not difficult to diagnose his friend’s case, and guess why he did not particularly Ike the new arrival.

Polly Short was the prettiest girl on the Diamond Fields, and a good many men had been more or less in love with her, but Joe Warton had begun to be looked upon as the favourite. In fact, the other candidates had almost given up all hope; and Joe, though he was not exactly engaged, was supposed to have arrived at a very fair understanding with her. She, though she had not much harm in her, was decidedly fond of admiration; while Joe Warton, though he was a capital good fellow, was a little heavy in hand; and his great affection for Polly sometimes showed itself in fits of jealousy, which were as near surliness as they could be. Given a man like the brilliant Sir Harry Ferriard, and let him admire Polly as he well might—for she would be an unusually pretty girl, not only on the Diamond Fields, but anywhere else—it would be easy to understand, so George Marshall thought, how the course of his friend’s true love should have got a little tangled.

“By the by, shall you ride Lone Star for her gallop to-morrow?” Joe Warton said to his friend after he had got up. “We shall win the Ladies’ Purse with her again this year, seems to me.”

“Yes, if nothing else is entered that can beat us,” Marshall, who was a man not much given to express a decided opinion, answered.

Lone Star belonged to Joe Warton, and had been for some time in training, for the forthcoming Kimberley races, on George Marshall’s farm. He had brought her into Kimberley the day before. She was a very nice mare, but of no particular class. Warton had, however, won The Ladies’ Purse, one of the minor races, with her the year before, and he had set his heart on winning the same race again that year.