"Well, it's worse than shooting canaries. The bell-birds live in the fern gullies: they're shy little brown things, hard to see, but they've a note just like a little bell chiming away in the tree-tops. You'd think even a Melbourne fine gentleman couldn't help liking them. But there was me gent, with his little gun, looking for scalps; and even a bell-bird's was better to him than none."
"What did you say to him? Did you let him shoot them?" the lad asked.
"I misremember what I said, but he didn't like it, an' he got nasty, and wanted to fight. Lord, you couldn't fight anything like that! So to end it I just gave him a good spanking, and let him go. He went."
Tom burst out laughing.
"You didn't, really?"
"I did, though. What else could you do with him? He reckoned he was grown-up, but he hadn't as much sense as my kid of ten. Spanking's the only thing for that sort—an' I guess he remembers the one I gave him yet. You see, he was rude."
"Are all Melbourne people like that?" Aileen queried, with a twinkle in her eye.
"Bless you, no," said the giant, twinkling in return. "Most of 'em come to fish, and they don't do any harm: an' there's lots that like the Bush, an' wouldn't hurt anything in it. Some of 'em's that proud of it they even collect all their lunch-papers and burn 'em after a picnic; but you don't meet many as well brought up as that." He knocked the ashes out of his pipe. "Well, I think it's a fair thing to go an' have some tea." He grinned at them, and strolled off along the deck.
"That's an idea," said Tom. "Come on, and we'll have some too."
The little saloon was crowded, so they brought their tea on deck, where nothing, Garth said, was ever so good as bread-and-butter, eaten in the sweet air that blew softly across the lake. Here and there brown-sailed fishing-boats could be seen, and sometimes the steamer slowed down while a boat ran alongside, and the crew pitched empty fish boxes down to the men in blue jerseys, in readiness for the night's haul.