Here Miss Carry pretended to hear her mother calling, and discreetly departed.
Ernest was too experienced a pedestrian to overwork himself, and blister his feet the first day, thereby converting the remaining portion of the journey into a penance; so finding himself in pleasant quarters, he determined to wait till the cool of the evening, and go on as far as the ancient and venerable town of Parramatta, which he was led to believe reared its double spires about eight miles farther on.
After enjoying the home-baked bread, the well-cured bacon, the fresh butter, and another tankard, he occupied himself with observing the pictures, which in rather grand gilt frames adorned the room. They smacked of the good old days. There was ‘The Tally-ho Coach leaving the Post-office, Sydney.’ A true English four-insider, with a team of highly improbable grays, proceeding at an impossible pace, from a pillared edifice with an enormous clock. The celebrated racehorse ‘Jorrocks,’ as he appeared winning his forty-fifth race, the majority of the cheering crowd depicted as wearing cabbage-tree hats. There was also the terrific finish at the Five Dock Steeplechase between Fergus and Slasher, with a sketch of the astonishing struggle, when Traveller beat Chester for the Sydney Cup after the fifth heat, on the old Sandy Course. This turf triumph had occurred about forty-five years since.
Much meditating upon the comparative antiquity and hoary age of incidents, even in a colony, Mr. Neuchamp paid his modest bill, shouldered his knapsack, and prepared to depart from this beer fountain in the desert. Meeting the pleasant glance of Carry as he was passing the door, he turned and said, ‘I must come down to Sydney next year, and I’ll be sure to pay you a visit, Carry.’
‘Oh, do!’ she said; ‘mother will be so pleased. But you haven’t told me your name; how shall we hear of you?’
‘If any one talks about Ernest Neuchamp to you, it will be of me.’
‘Ernest is a pretty name,’ said the girl, ‘but “Newchum!” that is not your real name, is it? of course you are a new chum, though it would be rude to say so.’
‘And what is “a new chum,” Carry? That is not my name, though the pronunciation is not so far unlike.’
‘Why, a new chum is a new arrival—a gentleman that——’
‘A black hat?’ suggested he.