‘I never thought about that,’ answered the girl with a half-curious look, as if back from the unreal world. ‘I have always fancied that I would do whatever other people would do. But we all have our pet fancies, which we spoil like children, or which spoil us, and the prosaic part of our life has to go on notwithstanding.’
‘Have you ever seen anything of the bush?’ inquired Ernest.
‘Nothing more than a very hasty visit to one or two of the inland towns. I have always wished to go to a real station and see something of bush life, but papa never could spare me sufficiently long. What is it like? All riding about, from morning to night, and being very sleepy in the evening?’
‘There is a good deal of that,’ said he, ‘but not quite so much as might be thought. There is a great want of books, and of the habit of reading, in many places, though I know of course that it is not universal. But I think when I have a place of my own that I can manage to unite work and play, real exertion with an intellectual alternation, and this should be the perfection of existence.’
‘I don’t see why it could not be managed,’ said Antonia. ‘Many of the young squatters have told me that they could not get books, and that they were becoming frightfully ignorant; but I always said it must be their own fault. Any one who must read will read, no matter what their circumstances are.’
‘So I believe,’ answered Ernest, with most appreciative accents. ‘When young people, or people of any age, say they have not time to read, it sounds in my ears as if they said that they had not time to eat their dinners, or to bathe, or say their prayers, or to talk to their friends. For these duties and other distractions they generally find leisure, and if the time be really fully occupied, a quarter of an hour almost in converse with some authors would provide the mind with new and instructive thoughts for the whole livelong day.’
‘Well, we must see how Mr. Neuchamp carries out his ideas when he has a station of his own,’ said Antonia archly. ‘He must have everything very nice, very superior to the ordinary ways of colonists, and must make money also; that is indispensable.’
‘I will answer for his trying to have things pleasantly and perhaps artistically arranged,’ said Ernest, following out the sketch; ‘but as for the making money, I have so little interest in it as one of the fine arts, that I may fail in that.’
‘But that is the foundation of all the good deeds that you may do, so at least papa says. If a man doesn’t make money, I heard him say once, he shows all the world that there is some quality lacking in him, and any little that he can say or do will not have its just weight; he is regarded only as an unpractical, unsuccessful enthusiast.’
‘I hate the word enthusiast,’ said Mr. Neuchamp, ‘or rather the sense of disparagement in which it is generally used. It has come to mean, a man who is obstinately bent on a course of conduct which is wrong, or who exaggerates the degree or importance of his practice in what is right.’