‘Took it? of course. We went into the library, where he wrote me out a cheque then and there for twenty thousand pounds, and I gave him the delivery note. Booroo-booroo and Chatsworth, with four thousand head of cattle, taken, without muster, by the book, everything given in. Something like a sale, wasn’t it?’
‘First-rate for some one—I don’t say who. But I’ll take three to one that Parklands knocks five thousand pounds profit out of it before the year is over.’
‘I take you, provided he doesn’t sell to Neuchamp,’ answered Croker. ‘I must say I think one bargain with him ought to satisfy any man, except Selmore.’
‘I’ll bet you a level hundred,’ said Paul, a little quickly, ‘that in five years Ernest here will be able to buy you up—horse, foot, and dragoons—without feeling the amount.’
‘Particularly if he has the invaluable aid and counsel of Paul Frankston,’ sneered Mr. Jermyn Croker. However, I shan’t be here to see, as I never intend to cross the Nepean again, or to see Sydney Heads except in an engraving.‘
‘We’ll all go and see you off,’ said Antonia, who with Ernest suddenly appeared as if they had not been listening to the conversation, which indeed they had not, but had taken a quiet walk down ‘an alley Titanic’ with glorious araucarias. ‘But whoever goes or stays, we must have dinner. I really do believe that it’s past seven o’clock.’
At this terrible announcement Paul’s ever robust punctuality asserted itself with a rebound. Seizing upon the fair Augusta he hurried her to the dining-room, where all conversation bordering upon business was banished for the present.
After the ladies had retired, the fascinating topic of the changed social aspect of the country since the gold crop had alternated with those of wheat, maize, wool, and tallow, which formerly absorbed so large a share of interest, again came uppermost. Upon this point Mr. Croker was grandly didactic.
‘Mark my words, Frankston,’ said he, throwing himself back in his chair, ‘in two years you will see this country a perfect hell upon earth! What’s to hinder it? Even now there’s hardly a shepherd to be got; people are talking of turning their sheep loose—that, of course, means ruin to wool-growing. Cattle will soon overtake the temporary demand; all the new buyers—nothing personal intended, Neuchamp—will be ruined. Tallow will fall directly the Russians have settled their difficulty. I know this from private sources. Flour will be a hundred pounds a ton again; of course there will be no ploughing for want of hands. These digger fellows will take to cutting their own throats first, and when in good practice those of the propertied classes for a change; and lastly, you’ll have universal suffrage. The scum will be uppermost, and you’ll end suitably with an unparalleled Jacquerie.’
Mr. Croker, having completed this pleasing patriotic sketch, filled his glass and looked round with the air of a man who had just demonstrated to inquiring youth that two and two make four.