'Very well,' he assented, 'and after that we can give another dinner and rout at my diggings. Just a sort of return match, you see?'
'But I don't see,' I said; 'I don't see the use of two parties.'
'Oh, but I do, Murdoch. We must make more of a man than we do of a nowt[12] beast. Now you mind that bull I had sent out from England—Towsy Jock that lives in the Easter field?—well, I gave a dinner when he came. £250 I paid for him too.'
'Yes, and I remember also you gave a dinner and fun when the prize ram came out. Oh, catch you not finding an excuse for a dinner! However, so be it: one dinner and fun for a bull, two for Archie.'
'That's agreed then,' said Moncrieff.
Now, my brothers and I and a party of Gauchos, with the warlike Bombazo and a Scot or two, had arranged a grand hunt into the guanaco country; but as dear old Archie was coming out so soon we agreed to postpone it, in order that he might join in the fun. Meanwhile we commenced to make all preparations.
They say that the principal joy in life lies in the anticipation of pleasure to come. I think there is a considerable amount of truth in this, and I am sure that not even bluff old King Hal setting out to hunt in the New Forest could have promised himself a greater treat than we did as we got ready for our tour in the land of the guanaco, and country of the condor.
We determined to be quite prepared to start by the time Archie was due. Not that we meant to hurry our dear cockney cousin right away to the wilds as soon as he 183 arrived. No; we would give him a whole week to 'shake down,' as Moncrieff called it, and study life on the estancia.
And, indeed, life on the estancia, now that we had become thoroughly used to it, was exceedingly pleasant altogether.
I cannot say that either my brothers or I were ever much given to lazing in bed of a morning in Scotland itself. To have done so we should have looked upon as bad form; but to encourage ourselves in matutinal sloth in a climate like this would have seemed a positive crime.