“You don’t call this grand country!” exclaimed the other passenger, who claimed to be, and looked like, a commercial traveller, and might have been a professional spieler—quite possibly both. “Why, it’s about the poorest country in New Zealand! You ought to see some of the country in the North Island—Wairarapa and Napier districts, round about Pahiatua. I call this damn poor country.”
“Well, I reckon you wouldn’t, if you’d ever been in Australia—back in New South Wales. The people here don’t seem to know what a grand country they’ve got. You say this is the worst, eh? Well, this would make an Australian cockatoo’s mouth water-the worst of New Zealand would.”
“I always thought Australia was all good country,” mused the driver—a flax-stick. “I always thought—”
“Good country!” exclaimed the man with the grey beard, in a tone of disgust. “Why, it’s only a mongrel desert, except some bits round the coast. The worst dried-up and God-forsaken country I was ever in.”
There was a silence, thoughtful on the driver’s part, and aggressive on that of the stranger.
“I always thought,” said the driver, reflectively, after the pause—“I always thought Australia was a good country,” and he placed his foot on the brake.
They let him think. The coach descended the natural terraces above the river bank, and pulled up at the pub.
“So you’re a native of Australia?” said the bagman to the grey-beard, as the coach went on again.
“Well, I suppose I am. Anyway, I was born there. That’s the main thing I’ve got against the darned country.”
“How long did you stay there?”