Fortunately for all parties, before the extreme limit of Miss Neuchamp’s patience and the resources of Rainbar had been reached, a welcome auxiliary arrived in the person of Mr. Middleton. That worthy paterfamilias had been compelled to visit his outlying stations, in order to ascertain the precise amount of death and destruction that was taking place, and was returning to his usual residence nearer the settled districts. He travelled in a light buggy with one horse, being thus enabled to carry a supply of forage, and even water, with him. This, the only known plan for crossing ‘dry country’ in a bad season, and at the same time maintaining a horse in tolerable condition, was not ornamental in detail. The buggy, with two bags of chaff secured behind, a bushel of maize in front, and a large water bag and bucket swung from the axle, had a striking and unusual effect. But the active, upstanding roadster was in better condition than any horse which had passed Rainbar for many a day, and Mr. Neuchamp at once saw his way to a transfer of responsibility, as far as Miss Augusta was concerned.
‘Well, Neuchamp, what do you think of Australia now?’ said the old gentleman, in a jolly voice, as, sunburned and dusty, with a great straw hat, a curtain and a net veil, a canvas hood to his buggy, and the fodder previously referred to picturesquely disposed about his travelling carriage, he drove up to the verandah, causing Augusta to put up her eyeglass with amazement. ‘Made any striking alterations for our good? Wish you’d try your hand at the weather, if that’s in your line.’
‘Come in, and we’ll talk it over,’ replied Ernest. ‘I’m charmed to see you in any kind of weather. Permit me to present you to my cousin, Miss Neuchamp, who doesn’t approve of your country at all. I must inform you, Augusta, this is Mr. Middleton, my fellow-passenger, whom you have heard me mention. I hope the ladies are all well.’
‘Pretty well when they wrote last; but, like all ladies, I fancy, they are terribly tired of the present state of the season—and no wonder. I can only recollect one worse drought during the thirty years I have been out here.’
‘Worse!’ ejaculated Augusta, ‘I should have thought that impossible. How did you contrive to exist?’
‘We did manage to keep alive, as I am here to testify,’ laughed the old gentleman, whose proportions were upon an ample and generous scale; ‘but of course it was a serious matter in every aspect. However, we weathered that famine, and we shall get over this, with patience and God’s blessing.’
That evening it was definitely arranged that Mr. Middleton should give Miss Neuchamp a seat in his encumbered but not overladen buggy as far as his own home station, which he trusted to reach in a week; after which he would undertake, when she was tired of Mrs. Middleton and the girls, to deposit her safely in Sydney.
This was an unlooked-for piece of good fortune. Ernest was much relieved in mind at being freed from the dilemma of returning Augusta as a kind of captive princess of Rainbar, or undertaking an expensive and inopportune journey for the sole purpose of accompanying her to a place which she never should have quitted.
Mr. Middleton, confident of securing provender, now that he had commenced to approach the confines of civilisation, was not sorry to be provided with a young lady companion, having had of late much of his own unrelieved society; and Augusta was more pleased than she cared to show at the prospect of escape from this Sahara existence, without the prestige of the desert or the novelty of Arabs. That night her portmanteau was packed, Tottie coming in for the reversion of as much raiment as constituted her an authority in fashions ‘on the river’ ever after, and such a douceur as confirmed her in Mr. Bank’s high estimate of Miss Neuchamp as a ‘real lady.’
At six o’clock next morning Augusta Neuchamp bade farewell for ever to the abode of the Australian representative of her ancient house.