Just then, thinking perhaps he scented a customer, Mr Glorie himself entered, all apron from the jaws to the knees.
“Ah! Mr Glorie,” cried Archie. “I really couldn’t leave Sydney without saying ta-ta, and expressing my sorrow for breaking—”
“Your indenture, young sir?”
“No; I’m glad I broke that. I mean the oil-jar. Here is a sovereign towards it, and I hope there’s no bad feeling.”
“Oh, no, not in the least, and thank you, sir, kindly!”
“Well, good-bye. Good-bye Mr Myers. If ever I return from the Bush I’ll come back and see you.”
And away they went, and away went Archie’s feeling of gloom as soon as he got to the sunny side of the street.
“I say,” said Harry, “that’s a lively coon behind the counter. Looks to me like a love-sick bandicoot, or a consumptive kangaroo. But don’t you know there is such a thing as being too honest? Now that old death-and-glory chap robbed you, and had it been me, and I’d called again, it would have been to kick him. But you’re still the old Johnnie.”
Now if I were writing all this tale from imagination, instead of sketching the life and struggles of a real live laddie, I should have ascended into the realms of romance, and made a kind of hero of him thus: he should have gone straight away to the bank when he received that 50 pounds from his uncle, and sent it back, and then gone off to the bush with twopence halfpenny in his pocket, engaged himself to a squatter as under-man, and worked his way right up to the pinnacle of fortune.