“Well, John William, what are you doing?”
“Cleaning my gun. What have you been doing, that's more like it? What took you trapesing into Melbourne the moment I got my back turned this morning?”
“Why, hasn't your mother told you?”
“Haven't seen her since I came in.”
“Well, but Arabella——”
“Arabella! I'm full up of Arabella,” said John William contemptuously; but the girl was still too deep in the Family Cherub to heed him. “There's no getting a word out of Arabella when she's on the read; so what's it all about, father?”
“I'll tell you; but you'd better shut yon window, John William, or I don't know what your mother 'll say when she comes in and finds the place full o' flies.”
It was the gun-room window that broke the law of no fresh air, causing Mr. Teesdale uneasiness until John William shut it with a grumble; for in this homestead the mistress was law-maker, and indeed master, with man-servant and maid-servant, husband and daughter, and a particularly headstrong son, after her own heart, all under her thumb together.
“Now then, father, what was it took you into Melbourne all of a sudden like that?”
“A letter by the English mail, from my old friend Mr. Oliver.”