As Miss Neuchamp, also attired in full evening costume, approached, while not far behind, with the air of a confirmed habitué, sauntered Mr. Jermyn Croker, Ernest thought he had never seen that young lady look to greater advantage. Something had evidently occurred with power to revive an attention to the details of dress which had been suffered of late to lie in abeyance. There was also a novel expression of not unbecoming doubt upon her resolute features which Ernest had never observed before. It soon appeared, however, that her essential characteristics were unchanged.
‘I am truly glad to see you, my dear Ernest,’ she said, offering him her cheek with proper cousinly coolness. ‘I hear that a beneficial change has taken place in your shocking climate. Mr. Croker says that prices have risen to their outside limit, and cannot possibly last. Of course you will sell out at once and go home?’
‘Of course I shall do no such thing,’ returned Ernest, with such unusual animation that Antonia could not help smiling. ‘I should consider it most ungrateful, as well as impolitic, to quit the land which has already done much for me, and may possibly do more.’
‘Well done, Ernest, my boy!’ said Mr. Frankston, who had just joined the party. ‘Never quit the ship that has weathered the storm with you while a plank is left in her. Now that we have our country filled with the sweepings of every port under the sun, we want the captain and first officer to act like men, and show the stuff they’re made of.’
‘I take quite a different view of my duty to Jermyn Croker, about whom I have felt much anxiety of late,’ drawled out that gentleman. ‘I see before me a chance of selling out at an absurdly high price, and taking my passage by next mail for one of the few countries that is worth living in. A madman might neglect such an opportunity for the sake of a few thousand roughs scrambling for gold at California, or Ballarat, but not Jermyn Croker, if I know him.’
‘And suppose stock rise higher still?’ queried Mr. Frankston, smiling at the magnificent dogmatism of his unsentimental friend.
‘My dear Frankston, how a man of your age and experience can so blind himself to the real state of affairs is a marvel to me. Cattle can’t rise. Five pounds all round for young and old on the station is a price never before reached in Australia. You must see the crash that is coming. Really, now, without humbug, don’t you know that there will be a change before Christmas?’
‘So there will,’ answered Paul, ‘but it will be for the better. We have not half the stock in the country to feed the great multitude that are, even now, on the sea. But if you will sell, you might give me the offer.’
‘Sold out of every hoof to Parklands this morning!’ answered Mr. Croker, looking round with a triumphant air. ‘I was standing on the club steps before breakfast when he came in from the northern steamer, and made me an offer before he got out of his hansom.’
‘And you took it?’