‘Would I not!’ said Gladys.
The first person they saw, on getting home, was Granville, who was lounging in the little veranda where they had taken tea on the afternoon of their arrival, smoking cigarettes over a book. It was the first volume of a novel, which he was scanning for review. He seemed disposed to be agreeable.
‘Gladys,’ he said, ‘this book’s about Australia; what’s a “new chum,” please? I may as well know, as, so far, the hero’s one.’
‘A “new chum,”’ his sister-in-law answered him readily, ‘is some fellow newly out from home, who goes up the Bush; and he’s generally a fool.’
‘Thank you,’ said Granville; ‘the hero of this story answers in every particular to your definition.’
Granville went on with his skimming. On a slip of paper lying handy were the skeletons of some of the smart epigrammatic sentences with which the book would presently be pulverised. Husband and wife had gone through into the house, leaving him to his congenial task; when the Tempter, in humorous mood, put it into the head of his good friend Granville to call back the Bride for a moment’s sport.
‘I say’—the young man assumed the air of the innocent interlocutor—‘is it true that every one out there wears a big black beard, and a red shirt, and jack-boots and revolvers?’
‘No, it is not; who says so?’
‘Well, this fellow gives me that impression. In point of fact, it always was my impression. Isn’t it a fact, however, that most of your legislators (I meant to ask you this last night, but our friend the senator gave me no chance)—that most of your legislators are convicts?’
‘Does your book give you that impression too?’ the Bride inquired coolly.