"Ah! Mr. Glorie," cried Archie. "I really couldn't leave Sydney without saying ta-ta, and expressing iny 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 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.
But Archie had not done that; and between you and me and the binnacle, not to let it go any further, I think he did an extremely sensible thing in sticking to the money.