After supper was ended, our new chum asked Annie if she would favour him with a song, as he had heard that all colonial ladies played and sang so well.
“I sing very little, Mr. Fulrake; another evening I will try, but to-night I promised Mat—Mr. Stanley—that I would visit my garden to see what he has been doing there. He has been weeding, and says that he is afraid that he has pulled up some of my young seedlings.”
Mat, who was standing by, on hearing this, promptly got his hat, and the two left the room together.
Mrs. Bell then turned to Fulrake, and asked him if he would play or sing.
“I play a little,” he answered, and thereupon sat down to the piano, and, first running his fingers in a critical manner over the keys, went through a difficult piece by Weber with such taste and feeling, playing it perfectly by ear, that the squire, who had stepped out to smoke a pipe with his son, said,—
“Tom, my boy, I’m not much of a judge, but I declare I do believe we have got a professor of music instead of French this time. By Jove, he can play!”
“So he can, governor; but I think he had better stay here with the ladies, instead of going with us to the out-station. He’ll amuse them, anyhow.”
When Mr. Fulrake got back to his room that night, he unpacked his writing-materials, lit a cigar, and wrote a letter to his father, which ran thus:—
“Bulinda, N.S.W., 18—,
“Christmas-time, 11 p.m.
“My dear Dad,—At this hour it is a little cooler, so I will write you another line. I sent you a letter from Sydney about the voyage, colonial town society, &c., so I’ll say no more on that score, but bring you at once to Bulinda Creek station.
“To begin with, the only good things in my sleeping apartment—a veritable den—are the cigar I am smoking and the pen I am writing with, both of which I brought from home. Oh! but I must tell you of my light. My lamp, I didn’t bring that out. There’s nothing very patent about it, excepting that it’s a piece of rope floating in a bowl of dirty grease. Forgive the apparent joke, but I can only say that it ‘couldn’t hold a candle to a farthing dip.’ It is called a ‘fat-lamp,’ I find. But these are trifles.
“Judging from what we hear at home concerning bush-life, and taking our impressions from the books we read upon the subject, all should be very romantic, and free, and beautiful. But the reality, great Scot!
“I’ll say nothing of the offensive independence of the so-called labouring classes, which I met with from the time I landed to my arrival here. You may say that my colonial experience has only lasted a few hours. True, oh, worthy dad! but, let me tell you, I don’t think it will last very many hours more, at all events in these parts; for, unless matters change very much, the probability is that the next time I shall write to you it will be from some partly-civilized district, or maybe I shall start home straight.
“I won’t bother you any more about myself; but first I must tell you, as a matter of fact, that there is little comfort and no furniture in the place, and the food is of the coarsest.
“Now for society. Well, you know old Bell; but, by gad, sir! you don’t know his wife. Vulgar aint the word to describe her; ’tisn’t in it; so, to use her own expression, ‘let her abide.’
“Next we come to a plump daughter, rich colour as to hair, good eyes, head well set on, good temper. I may have more to say about Miss Annie, as I intend to ‘cultivate’ her, please the pigs!
“Her brother Tom, a regular boor, who eyes one heavily, yet sits and says nothing excepting joining in in a ponderous way if the conversation turns upon horses,—or ‘scrubbers,’ he seemed to call the ones he referred to. By the way, there’s very little scrubbing done here, either to man or beast.
“There is a parson, named Tabor. He looks a Christian, and undoubtedly is a gentleman, and, I should say, is a good sort.
“And then there’s a man named Stanley. Every one in Sydney was talking of a sort of escaped gipsy of that name, who had been living with the blacks or wounded by bushrangers—all that sort of thing, you know,—and no doubt this is the same individual whom Bell has caught again. He’s a dark, good-looking man, and fairly-well cultivated I should fancy. But the most extraordinary thing is, perhaps, not so much that the whole family—daughter and all—call him by his Christian name and have him in to supper, but that they let him take evening rambles alone with Annie—that’s the daughter, you perceive.
“Listen! On this, my first evening, I gave the family some music. Now, I don’t play very badly, and I wanted the daughter to listen. But no; colonial manners step in. This is the signal for her to rise; and, under the pretence of weeding some garden or other, she retires out of doors to star-gaze with the hanger-on Stanley!
“I did not like to suggest that, in the absence of a moon, it was a case of gardening under difficulties, as, to speak honestly, my mother’s one ewe lamb didn’t want to get his sucking-teeth knocked out—and this gipsy is a big ’un, very. The balance of the family seemed to like my efforts on the piano; at all events, Mrs. Bell asked for another ‘toon,’ but I don’t care about throwing my pearls before those who can’t possibly appreciate them, so I shut up—anyhow, shut the piano up, a good one, by the way. The whole thing smacks, to my mind, of the opening of a three-volume novel; only I say at once that I don’t much fancy the hero, and I do rather like the heroine, as far as I’ve got, if, indeed, they do represent these two characters, ‘which I hopes it isn’t.’ At all events, I shall tell you if the plot thickens, as it will be some amusement to watch events.
“Give my love to my mother, and tell her that I must now retire to my couch of sticks and rotten bags—for of such does my bed appear to be composed, as viewed by that brilliant meteor, the ‘fat-lamp.’
“From your affectionate son,
“Lionel B. Fulrake.”
The next occasion on which our new chum saw Annie was one afternoon shortly after the evening on which he had written the letter to his father.