‘Half cash, and the balance in approved bills, at one and two years, secured upon the stock and station.’
‘Rather stiff,’ said Ernest; ‘but will you put the offer in writing, and leave it open for a week? I will before that time give you a decided answer.’
Mr. Sticker would have much pleasure in doing so. As Ernest preferred to wait for the important document, it was soon prepared, and he finally marched away with a fortune, as it turned out (fate and opportunity are queer things), in his waistcoat pocket. He was not too quick in his conditional annexation of this desirable territory. Ten minutes afterwards Mr. Hardy Baldacre dashed into the office on the same errand, quitting it with a curse which shocked Mr. Sticker, and provoked Mr. Pugsley, who was young and athletic, to inform him that he must not suppose that his money provided him the permission to be rude, though it did procure him consideration far beyond his deserts. Altogether, Mr. Baldacre felt as if his brandy-and-soda had been scarcely so efficacious as usual that morning.
When Mr. Neuchamp produced this small but important document to Paul Frankston, that commercial mentor rubbed his hands with unconcealed satisfaction.
‘You’ve got ’em, Ernest, my boy, hard and fast. I believe you might make a pound a head, say four thousand pounds out of it, in a month. Sticker is a good man, according to his light, and Pug’s a sharp fellow. But they don’t see, and won’t see, the signs of the times. They’re always remembering the old boiling-down days, and they fancy that the least change in markets will send us back to it. You did right to get the offer in writing, and for a deferred time. We’ll keep it a day or two, and then you shall go and accept the terms like a man.’
‘But how about the money?’ inquired Mr. Neuchamp with a shade of natural anxiety. ‘Twenty thousand pounds are no nutshells, however little it may sound in these extravagant days.’
‘Look here,’ said Paul, ‘find this ten thousand down; any agent will give you five thousand on the security of your year’s draft of fat stock from the two runs; it will come to more, I daresay, but we must be as careful as we can. I think that you will have to give a mortgage over Rainbar and Mildool—a second one—and then you may draw a cheque for the ten thousand as soon as you like.’
‘And what about the “approved” bills?‘
‘Well, the day after to-morrow you can go to old Sticker and pay him the half cash. I’ll put the cash part of it through; ask him to make out the bills, with interest added at 8 per cent; bring them to me, and I will put a name on the back which will render them legal tender, whatever may come of them after.’
‘The old story since I came to Australia,’ said Ernest. ‘It seems that I can do nothing without your advice; and that your help follows me as a natural consequence—whatever I do, and whatever I buy.’