‘And most extraordinary you look,’ thought Ernest to himself, though he dared not say so, mentally contrasting the stern Augusta’s dust-coloured tusser wrap, broad-leafed hat with green lining, rather stout boots, short dress, and flattened down hair, with Antonia, cool, glistening, delicately robed, and rose-fresh amid the bright-hued shrubberies of Morahmee, or even the Misses Middleton, perfectly comme il faut, on shipboard, in George Street, or at the station, as everybody ought to be, thought Ernest—unless she is an eccentric reformer, he was just about to say, but refrained. Was any one else of his acquaintance going to do wonders in the alleviation and reformation of the Australian world? and if so, what had he accomplished? Had he not been in scores of instances self-convicted of the most egregious mistakes and miscalculations? After all his experience, was he not now indebted almost for his financial existence to certain of these very colonists whose intelligence he had formerly held so cheap?
These reflections were not suffered to proceed to an inconvenient length, being routed by the clear and not particularly musical tones of Miss Augusta’s voice.
‘I can’t say much for Australian horses, so far, Ernest. I expected to see the fleet courser of the desert, and all that kind of thing. These seem wretched underbred creatures, and miserably poor.’
‘Lives there the man, with soul so dead,’ who doesn’t mind hearing his horses run down?
‘They are not bad horses, by any means, though low in condition, owing to this dreadful season,’ answered Ernest, rather quickly. ‘This one,’ touching the off-side steed, ‘is as good and fast and high-couraged a horse as ever was saddled or harnessed, but they have had nothing to eat for six months, to speak of. So they quite surpass the experience of the cabman’s horse in Pickwick; and I can’t afford to buy corn at a pound a bushel.’
‘I forgot about the horse in Pickwick,’ said Augusta, who, a steady reader in her own line, which she denominated ‘useful,’ had little appreciation of humour, and never could be got to know the difference between Pickwick and Nicholas Nickleby, Charles O’Malley and The Knight of Gwynne. ‘But surely more neatness in harness and turn-out might be managed,’ and she looked at the dusty American harness and rusty bits.
‘You must remember, my dear Augusta, that you are not only in the provinces, but in the far far Bush, now—akin to the Desert—in more ways than one. I don’t suppose the Sheik Abdallah turns out with very bright bits; but, if he does, he has the advantage of us in the labour supply. We are compelled to economise rigidly in that way.’
‘You seem compelled to economise in every way that makes life worth having,’ said his downright kinswoman. ‘Does any one ever make any money at all here to compensate for the savage life you seem to lead?’
‘Well, a few people do,’ replied Ernest, half amused, half annoyed. ‘If we had time to visit a little, not perhaps in this neighbourhood, I could show you places well kept and pretty enough, and people who would be voted fairly provided for even in England.’
‘I have seen none as yet,’ said Miss Neuchamp; ‘but I believe much of the prosperity in the large towns is unreal. I met a very pleasant, gentlemanlike man in Sydney, in fact one of the few gentlemen I did see there—a Mr. Croker, I think, was his name—who said it was all outside show, and that nobody had made any money in this colony, or ever would.’