‘“They believe that Victoria is choke-full of Yankees and diggers, stowaways and emigrants, and that the whole thing will ‘bust up’ directly, and let down prices everywhere to what they were before the gold.
‘“People that travel, and keep their eyes open, know what foolishness all this sort of thing is. A regular Sydney man thinks all Victorians are blowers and speculators. A regular Victorian thinks all Sydney men are old-fashioned, slow prigs who wouldn’t spend a guinea to save five pounds. The truth is pretty near the middle. Don’t you stick at home all your life, like a mallee scrubber, that has only one dart, on the plain and back to his scrub, and then you won’t run away with the notion that because a man is born on one side of a river and not on the other, he ain’t as clever, or as sensible, or as good a hand at making money or saving it, as you are. It’s only country-bred, country-reared folks that think that way.
‘“What I want you to tell the boss is this. He’d better set old Paul Frankston to get a quiet offer of this Mildool with four thousand odd head—it will carry about seven or eight—and if they’ll take four-fifteen or five pound all round, ram ’em with it at once. Tell Neuchamp he can send that native chap to manage it, and it will be the best day’s work he’s done for some time. Tell him Ab. Levison said so. Good-bye. You take a run down to Melbourne next chance you get of a holiday, and don’t stay out here till you get the Darling rot. Good-bye.”
‘And so he cantered off on old “BI.” Levison don’t go in for much talk in a general way, but when he once begins he don’t leave off so easy. I thought he was going to talk all night, and so lose a day. But catch him at that. I think I’ve told you every word he said, for I went and wrote it down as soon as he went away.‘
So far Mr. Banks. Upon the receipt of his artless missive, Ernest went at once to Paul Frankston, and communicated to him the substance of the message of Mr. Levison.
‘This is putting on the pot, my dear boy,’ said he. ‘If anything happens to shake stock, Rainbar and Mildool will tumble down like a house of cards. But now the wind is dead fair, and we may venture on studding-sails—crowd on below and aloft. I back Levison’s opinion that it is the right time to buy before Sticker and Pugsley’s notion that it is the right time to sell.’
‘What sort of terms do you think they will require?’ asked Ernest, who was fired with the idea of consolidating into one magnificent property the two crack cattle runs of Rainbar and Mildool, the latter a grandly watered, splendidly grassed station, but wofully mismanaged according to old custom.
‘Half cash at least, and not very long dated bills either,’ said Paul, ‘but we can manage the cash on your security, as your name now stands high in the money market. As to the bills, tell them that I will endorse them. They won’t make any objection then.’
‘How much heavier is the load of my obligations to you to become?’ asked Ernest. ‘I feel as if I should never live to free myself from the debt I owe you already.’
‘Don’t trouble yourself, my dear boy,’ said the liberal endorser. ‘If things go well, nothing’s easier for you than to clear off every stiver of debt. See how you have been able to pay off Levison, principal and interest, out of that last lot of cattle, without a shade of difficulty. If the rise takes place which Levison and I and some more of us anticipate, why you, I, and he stand to win something very respectable. You can then give us all a cheque for the amount advanced, and the whole thing is over and finished. Until the drought broke up, I don’t deny that we all had to be very close-hauled, and lay-to a good deal from time to time; but now, with bullocks eight pounds a head, and fat sheep ten shillings—wool up too, and real property rising,—not to mention the shipping trade doubling every month,—why, if we can’t clap on sail, my boy, we never can, and what the ship can’t carry she may drag.’