To this Mr. Jedwood made answer that he should consider himself to be qualifying for admission to a lunatic asylum if he attempted to do any such thing. ‘In the first place you would lose,’ he said, ‘a quantity of your best land, and your best water. In the next place, as their stock increased they would use and spoil double the quantity of land they had any legal title to. Most probably they would not work for you, when you needed labour, except at their own price and terms; and if you wished at any time to buy them out, they would ask and compel you to give double the price they had paid. No, no; I’ve kept free selectors out all these years, and, as long as I live here, I’ll do so still.’
So Mr. Neuchamp had again to fall back upon his own thoughts and excogitations. He was not convinced by Mr. Jedwood, who took a narrowed, prejudiced view of the case, he contended. But he arrived at the conclusion in his own mind, that the amount of bodily and mental labour devoted to the sheep-pasturing division of Garrandilla was exhaustingly large, and that any mode of simplifying it, and reducing this great army of labourers, would be very desirable.
More and more to him was it apparent daily that there was no cessation, no leisure, no possible contemplative comfort in a life like this. It was the same thing every day. Sheep, sheep, sheep—usque ad nauseam.
Garrandilla was a highly unrelieved establishment. There were no ordinary bush distractions. There was no garden. There were no buildings except those positively necessary for the good guidance and government of the place. Jedwood’s two rooms served him for every conceivable want here below. They really were not so much bigger than the captain’s cabin in the good ship which brought Ernest to Australia. But they were large enough to eat, drink, and sleep in twenty years since, and they were so now.
At times a neighbour rode over and spent an hour or two, talking sheep, of course. Occasionally a lady, from sheer weariness or ennui, would accompany her husband or brother, and beat up the great Mr. Jedwood’s quarters for a short visit.
One day Ernest was standing near the cottage in a meditative position, when a gentleman rode up, having a lady on either hand. Mr. Jedwood, with old-fashioned gallantry, promptly assisted the fair visitors to dismount, and then calling out loudly, said, ‘Neuchamp, take these horses over to the stable.’
Ernest walked over, and taking the horses mechanically, was about to make for the stable, when one of the ladies exclaimed in a tone of great astonishment, ‘Mr. Neuchamp!’ He looked up, and to his very considerable surprise recognised one of the young ladies of the Middleton family, his fellow-voyagers.
‘Why, what is the meaning of all this?’ inquired Miss Middleton. ’I never thought to see you so generally useful; but I understand—you are staying at Garrandilla, and performing the “colonial experience” probation.’
‘You have guessed it exactly with your usual acuteness, Miss Middleton,’ said Ernest, who, slightly confused at having to act as amateur stable-boy, had now recovered his usual self-possession,—never long absent, to do him justice. ‘I will come in as soon as I have stabled the horses.’
When Ernest returned he found the ladies evidently concluding a short narrative to Mr. Jedwood, in which he guessed himself to have figured. Nothing could be warmer or more pleasurable, however, than their recognition.