'Don't mind me, I'll just sit down here and have a smoke while you read,' Stevenson said; 'don't disturb any one, perhaps they are busy.'
He sat down on the verandah step, and began to fill his pipe, and Cameron, relieved, opened his papers, and was in the Transvaal for the rest of the afternoon.
To look at, Stevenson was a typical young bushman. He had added inches to his stature so rapidly, and breadth to his shoulders, that he was ill at ease anywhere but in the saddle. His complexion was burnt to a deep copper. Grey, good eyes looked squarely at you.
Used to cities, you would not like his dress. A serviceable tweed suit, country-cut, one of the brilliant ties, which, so the storekeepers persuade the bush, are worn in Sydney, a soft brown hat with its dangling, string-coloured fly-veil.
His father was a vigorous old man of seventy; his type occurs again and again on the out back stations.
He had gathered great wealth during all those laborious years, and he spent it, if not frugally, at least with full respect for its difficult garnering. He had been a member of the Upper House, and his wife, during her lifetime, had much enjoyed the dignity of seeing his letters addressed, 'The Hon. Matthew Stevenson, M.L.C.'
He had had but a rudimentary education, yet his plain common-sense and clear intellect had made the loss only a slight one to him. To his sons—six of them he had—he offered education, or at all events its equivalent—the money for it—liberally, and three of them had taken advantage of it, and gone finally into various professions in Sydney.
The others—the duller three—had assimilated just as much of the tonic waters as does the ordinary youth of eighteen; then they shook the dust of Sydney off their feet, and returned thankfully to the station where their hearts had always been. Mortimer was youngest of this latter three, and the only one now unmarried.
Bart came down the passage, and his eyes brightened at the sight of the figure smoking on the verandah step.
'Hallo!' he said, 'just the fellow I wanted. Look here, Daly gave me a whole lot of new seed—Sheep Burnett I think he called it. Will it hurt to sow it on that place where the sorghum was?'