‘By the holy poker, sir,’ shouted Mr. Windsor, roused out of his usual cool demeanour, ‘you’ve just hit it there; there’s no man worth calling a man as wouldn’t work himself to skin and bone, and suffer thirst till his tongue hung out, if he could make himself of some account in the eyes of some women I’ve seen. There’s a girl that we saw no later than last night, sir—you know who I mean; by George, if she’d only hold up her finger I’d live on rice and pickles like a Chinaman to the end of my days, and sniff at a glass of grog like old Watch does.’
‘Very good resolution, Jack; and Carry Walton is as nice a girl, and as good, I’m sure, as ever tempted a man to make good resolutions. I quite approve of your taste. Indeed, she’s a great friend of mine, and if you like to show what stuff you are really made of, I’ll see what I can do to give you a helping hand.’
John Windsor did not speak for some time. He looked before him for a few seconds as if watching the far sky-line on the great primeval wastes where his youth had been passed. Then he turned with a grave and sobered expression, very different from the one habitual to his somewhat reckless demeanour. ‘I don’t like to say much, sir—talking isn’t my line, when I mean anything—but if you’re good enough to be bothered with me for a year or two, and if I get that girl for a wife, and keep her as she ought to be kept by my own industry, you’ll have a man as will work for you, ride for you, or fight for you, as long as you want any one on this side.’
‘I know that, Jack,’ said Mr. Neuchamp, looking feelingly at the heightened colour and speaking expression of his follower; ‘and if I have any claim beyond gratitude, you cannot repay it more effectually, and more agreeably to my mind, than by acting in such a way as to make people talk of you by and by as an industrious, steady, and I am sure they will add, clever and successful man.’
Jack’s manly face glowed, and his brown eyes glistened at this encouraging statement; but he refrained from further speech until they reached the broad arterial thoroughfare which, from all the great western and southern provinces, leads into the most beautiful city in Australia.
‘This looks something like a crowd, sir. What a mob of houses, people, cabs, teams, men, women, and children! What in the name of fortune do they all do, and where do they all go at night? Well, I never thought the town was as big as this. Confound the horse’ (this to Ben Bolt, who lashed out at a passing hansom), ‘he’ll kill some one yet before he’s safe in the stable.’
Perhaps a city is never seen to such advantage as after a considerable sojourn in the provinces, at sea, or in any such other distant or isolated abode, where the dweller is necessarily debarred from the required licenses of civilisation. At such a time the sensations, keenly sharpened by abstinence, do more than justice to the real, even to the apparent, advantages of that aggregation of human atoms known as a city.
The returning or arriving traveller revels in the real and supposititious treasures of this newly-discovered fairyland. The predominance and accessibility of wonders; the daily presence of friends, acquaintances, strangers, and notables, dazzle and deceive the eye long accustomed to the rare presentment of such personages; the public buildings, the parks, the intellectual and artistic treasure-houses, the higher standard of appearance, dress—all combine to excite and animate the mind.
Mr. Neuchamp had been familiar with divers capitals of considerably greater pretensions, and of world-wide historic rank and reputation. London had been his home, Paris his holiday retreat; Rome, Venice, Vienna, his occasional residence. But he thought he had never before felt so high and genuine a degree of exhilaration when returning to any of those great cities after an absence, as he now acknowledged in every vein and pulse, as he rode up the not particularly gorgeous avenue of Brickfield Hill, and passing the railway station, decided to thread George Street and, depositing the horses at a snug stable he knew of, find his way once more to the office of Paul Frankston and Co.
It would be unjust to Mr. Neuchamp to say that this name and its concomitant associations had not been many times unquestioned and sole possessors of his thoughts. Many a time and oft had he wondered whether the household remained exactly in statu quo. Did the old man return nightly to his dinner, his cigar, his seat in the verandah, and his unfailing request to Antonia to play and sing? He could fancy her pleasant smile as she sat down to the instrument, and her cheerful performance of the somewhat old-fashioned tunes and melodies that her father loved.