“Oh, bother that!” replied Teddy sanguinely; “we sha’n’t want any. The fellows I’ve read about who went to the diggings never had a halfpenny, but they always met with a friendly squatter or tumbled into luck in some way or other.”
“That was in the old days,” said Val in a forlorn way. “The squatters have all been cleared out, and there are only hotels and boarding-houses left, where they expect people to pay for what they have to eat.”
“They’re a stingy lot then, and quite unlike what I’ve read in books about the customs in Australia; but what can you expect when they have a railway!”
Teddy spoke in such a scornful manner of this sign of civilisation that he made Val laugh, raising his spirits again.
“All right, old chap!” said the little fellow. “I daresay we’ll get along very well although we haven’t any money to speak of with us. Two shillings, you know, is something; and no doubt it will keep us from starving till we come across luck.”
Teddy cheerfully acquiesced in this hopeful view of things; and then the two, being alone in the carriage, chatted away merrily on all sorts of subjects until they arrived at their station, which a porter sang out the name of exactly in the same fashion as if they were at home.
This quite exasperated Teddy, who, when he got down and looked about him, opened his eyes with even greater wonder.
Surely this large town couldn’t be Ballarat!
Why, that place ought to be only a collection of hastily-run-up wooden shanties, he thought, with perhaps one big store where they sold everything, provisions, and picks and shovels, with cradles for rocking the gold-dust out of the quartz and mud.
Where were the canvas tents of the diggers, and the claims, and all?