JACK AND HIS MASTER
It was necessary to bait the horses; it was equally essential for the pair themselves to have something to eat. So they rode under the olden arch of the oak-lined Falcon, and it was "your Grace" at every step, with ironic iteration very hard for either of them to bear without a word to the other. They dismounted therefore with the less delay; and Olivia turned her back upon the coffee-room window, and on an elderly, bald, well-dressed man, whose cool fixed stare made the girl extremely angry, when Jack at her side gave a shout of delight.
"So help me never! it's the boss himself!"
Olivia turned, and there was the objectionable old fellow in the window smiling and waving to her enchanted companion. And this was the man of whom she had heard so often! She did not stop to consider how he came to be here; the back-blockers were already at explanations, but Olivia was not listening. She was thinking of the bearded, jovial, hearty squatter of her imagination; and she was glancing askance at the massive chin and forehead, and at the white moustache cropped close over the bad mouth of the real man.
"Mr. Dalrymple—my old boss—Miss Sellwood!" shouted Jack, introducing them with a wealth of pantomime. "We're coming up to lunch with you, sir; that is, you're to lunch with me; it's my shout!"
And poor Olivia found herself swept off her feet, as it were, into the presence of a man whom all her instincts had pronounced odious at sight.
But the higher court of the girl's intellect reversed this judgment on the appeal of her trained perceptions. The elderly squatter was not after all a man to be summed up at a glance or in a word: his undoubted assurance was tempered and redeemed by so many graces of manner and address as to upset entirely the girl's preconceptions of his class. At table he treated her with a princely courtesy, imperceptibly including her in a conversation which poor Jack would have conducted very differently if left to himself. After the first few minutes, indeed, Olivia could see but two faults in the squatter; the first was the fierce light his charming manners reflected on those of Jack; and the second was a mouth which made the girl regret the austere cut of his moustache whenever she looked at Mr. Dalrymple.
"So you left before shearing, sir!" cried Jack, who was grossly eager for all station news. "I wonder you did that. They must be in the thick of it now!"
"They were to begin on the fifth of this month. The shearing, Miss Sellwood, is the one divine, far-off event towards which the whole sheep-station moves," added Mr. Dalrymple, with a glibness worthy of Claude Lafont.
"And don't you forget the lamb-marking," chimed in Jack. "I hope it was a good lambing this year, sir?"