"Nonsense!" said Mrs. Buckley. "Is he not joking now, Captain Brentwood? That is far too good news to be true."
"It is true, nevertheless, madam," said Captain Brentwood. "I thought it would meet with your approval, and I can see by Sam's face that it meets with his. You see, my dear lady, Buckley has got to be rather necessary to me. I miss him when he is absent, and I want to be more with him. Again, I am very fond of my son Jim, and my son Jim is very fond of your son Sam, and is always coming here after him when he ought to be at home. So I think I shall see more of him when we are ten miles apart than when we are fifty. And, once more, my daughter Alice, now completing her education in Sydney, comes home to keep house for me in a few months, and I wish her to have the advantage of the society of the lady whom I honour and respect above all others. So I have bought Garoopna."
"If that courtly bow is intended for me, my dear Captain," said Mrs. Buckley, "as I cannot but think it is, believe me that your daughter shall be as my daughter."
"Teach her to be in some slight degree like yourself, Mrs. Buckley," said the Captain, "and you will put me under obligations which I can never repay."
"Altogether, wife," said the Major, "it is the most glorious arrangement that ever was come to. Let us take a glass of sherry all round on it. Sam, my lad, your hand! Brentwood, we have none of us ever seen your daughter. She should be handsome."
"You remember her mother?" said the Captain.
"Who could ever forget Lady Kate who had once seen her?" said the Major.
"Well, Alice is more beautiful than her mother ever was."
There went across the table a bright electric spark out of Mrs. Buckley's eye into her husband's, as rapid as those which move the quivering telegraph needles, and yet not unobserved, I think, by Captain Brentwood, for there grew upon his face a pleasant smile, which, rapidly broadening, ended in a low laugh, by no means disagreeable to hear, though Sam wondered what the joke could be, until the Captain said,—
"An altogether comical party that last night at the Donovans', Buckley! The most comical I ever was at."