‘Indeed!’ he said stiffly, and addressed himself to his tea-cup.
‘For,’ explained the Bride, exhibiting dangerous symptoms, ‘we do drive ’em to the poll out there, and make no bones about it either!’
‘Indeed?’ said Mr Travers again; but this time there was some curiosity in his tone. ‘This is interesting. I always thought Australia was such a superlatively free country!’
‘So it is,’ she cried warmly, beginning to speak at a perilous pace, and with her worst twang; ‘my word it is! But you don’t understand me. It’s like this: we do drive ’em to the poll, up the Bush; I’ve driven ’em lots o’ times myself. They’re camped out—the voters, like—all over the runs, for all the hands have a vote; and to get ’em to the police-barracks (the poll, d’ye see?) on election day, each squatter’s got to muster his own men and drive ’em in. I used to take one trap with four horses, and father another. Gracious, what a bit of fun it was! But the difficulty was——’
She hesitated, for Lady Bligh was staring at her; and, though her ladyship’s face was in shadow, the Bride was disturbed, for a moment, by the rigid pose of the old lady’s head. A queer expression was come over the face of the new Member, moreover; but this Gladys could not see, for he was a tall man, standing, while she was seated.
‘What was the difficulty?’ asked Granville from a corner, in an encouraging tone.
Gladys instantly forgot Lady Bligh. ‘To keep ’em from going to the shanty first,’ she answered, with a merry laugh.
‘The shanty?’ repeated Mr Travers, with a vague idea of sailors’ songs.
‘The pub., then. Of course they all went afterwards, and—but we were obliged to keep them sober till they’d voted; and that’s where the difficulty came in.’