‘And so, Mr. Neuchamp, here we meet, after all our arguments, and passages-of-arms,’ said the younger sister. ‘We are on our native heath, you know, so we shall take the offensive. How do you find all the new theories and schemes for improvement stand the climate?’
‘Not so very badly,’ assented Ernest boldly. ‘I am biding my time, like the Master of Ravenswood. I intend to cause a sensation by carrying them out when I have a station of my own.’
‘Oh, you must get one in this district,’ affirmed the elder sister with determination; ‘it would be so pleasant to have some one to talk to. We are living in utter solitude, as far as rational conversation is concerned.’
Mr. Jedwood at this juncture ‘trusted that, as they did him the honour to pay him a visit now and then, they did not include Garrandilla in the conversational solitude.’
‘Oh, you know, you’re such an old friend. We can recollect riding to Garrandilla with papa ever since we could be trusted on horseback. It is one of our chief pleasures and resources. But really, Mr. Jedwood, you ought to build a new cottage. I used to think the old hut a splendid place once, but it looks now, you must confess, rather small.’
‘Two rooms for one man, and that man an old bachelor, Miss Middleton, are not so very bad. I’m used to the old place. I can sit there and write my letters, and here, by the chimney side, I smoke my pipe and watch the embers. But I think I must put up a new place, if it’s only for my young lady friends. I’ll see about it after shearing, after shearing.’
But this promise of a comparatively palatial edifice after shearing had been made, to the young ladies’ knowledge, for several years past, and they evidently did not place much faith in it; Miss Middleton asserting that it was lucky Mr. Jedwood had not commenced life at Garrandilla in a watch-box, as he most certainly would have continued the use of that highly compressed apartment.
They all laughed at this, and Mr. Middleton affected to reprove his merry daughter for her sally, but the end of it was that Ernest received a very cordial invitation to visit his old acquaintances at their station, distant about twenty miles, and mentally resolved to take an early opportunity of availing himself of it. The society of young ladies had been entirely out of his line since he had parted with Antonia Frankston, on the verandah at Morahmee. The effect was agreeable in proportion to the period of compulsory withdrawal from such pleasures and recreations.
Truth to tell, he was commencing to weary somewhat of the eternal, never-ending merino drill. He could understand a lad of seventeen or eighteen, like Charley Banks, spending two or three years profitably enough in the Garrandilla grind, and being better so employed than anywhere else. But he, Ernest Neuchamp, was a man whose years and months were of somewhat more value in the world than those of a raw lad. He thought, too, that he knew about as much of the not very abstruse and recondite lore necessary for the average management of a station as he was likely to acquire in another year, or any greater length of time. He resolved that, after shearing, he would state his case fully to Mr. Frankston, and secure, if possible, that paternal elder’s consent to his purchasing a station of his own with his own money.
From time to time at long intervals, whenever by no possibility could any excuse be found for working among the sheep, would Mr. Doubletides summon him, the other youngsters, and any unoccupied individuals that were handy, and crossing the river, proceed to ‘regulate the cattle a bit,’ as he expressed it. Jack Windsor being a first-class stockman, and handy with the roping-pole, was always invited to join the party. Then they would have a week’s mustering, branding, drafting, weaning, fat cattle collecting, what not—and then every one would come back much impressed with the heroism of the whole expedition, and the cattle would be left to their own devices for three or four months longer. These muster parties were extremely congenial to Mr. Neuchamp’s tastes and tendencies. He found the country, which was wild and hilly in places, more interesting than the uniform, monotonous, but profitable campaign, where roamed the carefully-tended merino. There were Alpine gorges, tiny streamlets, masses of foliage, botanical treasures, and above all, a mode of life more irregular, more volitional, than the daily mechanical regularity with which the machinery of the ‘merino-mill,’ as Barrington profanely called it, revolved diurnally at Garrandilla proper.