“You need not bother about an introduction to me, I knew who you were as you came along the wharf; where is your brother who lectured, I thought he would have come too?”
“Oh, no!” replied Tim, who was rather taken aback by this voluble welcome. “He has gone to Bulinda Creek.”
“What! Squire Bell’s? I was at school with his daughter Annie, a stuck-up girl, full of stupid, old-country notions. Got ‘a down’ upon me, because I suppose she went ‘home’ for a few months, and knew I had never been; or because, as some say, she’s full of nonsense, learnt from an old parson, a sort of private tutor to her brother, who’s sponging on the squire. Did you see the daughter? she’s a ‘native,’ you know.”
“Yes, I did see a shy-looking, pretty girl with splendid hair, for a few seconds, whilst she was standing with her father.”
“Shy! pretty!” snapped back Miss Charlotte; “well, my word, if you called rusty-coloured hair, and red cheeks pretty, why she is; but it’s not my idea of a handsome girl. I admire the true class of beauty—the statuesque; and now I must look after pa and ma in the saloon.”
With which announcement she turned abruptly on her heel and departed.
“Here’s a row,” said Tim; “I wonder whether there are many more like her on the Downs;” whilst he gazed after the retreating form of Miss Keen, as she stamped her way rapidly towards the companion. “I suppose then, that that girl’s washed-out face and tow-coloured hair is true beauty. What did she call it—the statue sort? Well, I prefer t’other sort of statue.”
Leaving Tim to pursue his journey with the Keen family, we will return to Mat.
Two days after his brother’s departure, he and the squire had started on horseback to the Creek, Annie and Parson Tabor, with the two natives, having gone on before in the buggy.
It was early on a beautiful morning, as the two men wended their way out of Sydney, the air enlivened with the cries of hundreds of Blue Mountain parrots, busily engaged in chasing each other, in whole flocks in the forests, or sucking their breakfasts from the blossoms of the gum-trees.