‘That one sit along a wheelbarrow, liket this one;’ here he took up a book from Ernest’s table and pretended to look into it with great and absorbed interest.
‘Anybody in the coach, Piambook?’
‘One fellow Chinaman,’ returned the messenger, with cool indifference.
After this information Mr. Neuchamp at once perceived that no time must be lost. Augusta could not be left a moment longer than was necessary, sitting in a disabled coach in the midst of a boundless plain, with a Chinaman for her vis-à-vis. What a situation for a young lady to whom Baden was as familiar as Brompton, Paris as Piccadilly, Rome, Florence, Venice, as the stations on the Eastern Counties Railway! He did not believe she was afraid. She was afraid of nothing. But the situation was embarrassing.
The hawk-eyed Piambook had descried the stranded coach—the wheelbarrow, as his comrades called it—on the mail track, about a mile off his path of duty. It was full twelve miles from Rainbar. In a quarter of an hour the express waggon with two cheerful but enfeebled steeds stumbled and blundered along at a very different pace from that of Mr. Parklands, when he rattled up Ernest to the Rainbar door, on the occasion of their first memorable drive.
However, the distance from home was luckily short, and in about two hours Mr. Neuchamp arrived at the spot where, in the disabled coach, sat Miss Augusta Neuchamp, possessing her soul in impatience, and gradually coming to the conclusion that Ah Ling—who sat stolidly staring at her and regretting the loss of time which might have been spent in watering his garden or smoking opium, the only two occupations he ever indulged in—was about to rob and perhaps murder her. As she always carried a small revolver, and was by no means ignorant of its use, it is possible that Ah Ling was in greater danger than he was aware of. His fair neighbour would infallibly have shot him had he made any hasty or incautious motion.
When Mr. Neuchamp rumbled up in his useful but not imposing vehicle, a slight shade of satisfaction overspread her features.
‘Oh, Ernest, I am delighted to see you; however did you find out my position? Don’t you think it was inexcusable of the coach company to send us all this way in a damaged vehicle? I thought all your coaching arrangements were so perfect.’
‘Accidents will happen, my dear Augusta,’ said Ernest, ‘in all companies and communities, you know. Cobb and Co. are the best of fellows in the main. But whatever induced you to come up into this wild place without writing to me first? Have you not suffered all kinds of hardship and disagreeables?’
‘Well, perhaps a few; but I knew all about the country from some books I read on the voyage out. I studied the directory till I found out the coach lines, and I should not have complained but for this last blunder. But what a barren wilderness this all seems. I thought Australia was a land of rich pastures.’