“Very well. You could not be ordained for more than a year. Before that I think I could arrange with the Bishop for you to be ordained on your mastership here. There is not so much difficulty made about a title as used to be the case.”
“You are most kind, sir. I hope you will not think me ungrateful; but I feel it to be my first duty to find my mother and sister, if I can.”
“I cannot blame you. But I should like to know what steps you mean to take. I understood you to say you had obtained no further information.”
“No; and I do not expect to obtain any information, so long as I am in England. But if I were out in Australia, it might be different.”
“What do you propose to do, then?”
“Well, in the first place, to work my passage out to Australia—to Swan River, you know.”
“Ay, to Dalby’s Plot, to which it was ascertained that your mother went when she landed in Australia. But you doubtless remember that we ascertained, two years and a half ago, that she had left the colony, and had gone—some said to Tasmania, and others to Cape Town; but no one has ever given us a clue, by which we might discover the place to which she had really removed.”
“That is so. But if I were on the spot I think I might be able to hunt out information, which no one, who was not as deeply interested as I am, would be able to obtain.”
“You may be right in that. Well, suppose you went out, and succeeded in finding Mrs Rivers—what then?”
“Then I should like to buy land—a small farm. A little money goes a long way out there, you know, sir. Then, when I was getting on pretty well, I might be ordained by one of the colonial bishops, and do clerical work combined with farming. It isn’t the same kind of thing out there, I am told, that it is in England. There are no large populations—except, of course, in the towns—which take up a man’s whole time.”