Something akin to a smile flickered round the shaven lips of the descendant of Hengist as, contemplating the lop ears of his horse, he observedly contentedly,
"Ees, shure; an' 'hat's f'r w'y Oi be a-teakin' of 'em."
"Well, Alf's laid-up; not able to look after them"——
"Oi 've 'eard 'at yaan afoor."
——"so I've come to take them back, and leave them at his camp on Mondunbarra."
"Horrite. Oi wants wun-an'-twenty bob horf o' you afoor 'em (bullocks) tehns reaoun'."
"Will you have it now, or wait till you get it?" I asked, betrayed by the annoyance of the moment into a species of vulgarity unbecoming an officer and gentleman. "I don't mind paying you the money, provided it clears the bullocks for the future—not otherwise. In the meantime I'm going to take them back-pay or no pay."
"Be 'e a-gwean to resky 'em?" he inquired, slightly reining his hippopotamus, and looking me frankly in the face, whilst an almost merry twinkle animated his small blue eyes.
"By no means," I replied suavely; and we rode together for a few minutes in silence.
I had wakened the wrong man. The Immovable had scored, simply because he was a person of one idea, and that idea panoplied in impenetrable ignorance. A compound idea, by the way: namely, that Alf's bullocks were going to the station yards, and that he, Fitz-Hengist, was taking them there. All this was apparent to me as I regarded him out of the comer of my eye.