‘I expect great things,’ said Annabel, ‘and I intend to enjoy myself immensely. Fancy, what a pleasure it will be to me to see quantities of new people! Even Rosamond confessed to me that she felt interested in our coming glimpse of Australian society. We have been a good deal shut up, and it will do us good; even Beatrice will fall across a new book or a fresh character to read, which comes to much the same thing. I prefer live characters myself.’
‘And I prefer the books,’ said Beatrice; ‘there’s such a dreadful amount of time lost in talking to people, very often, about such wretched commonplaces. You can’t skip their twaddle or gossip, and you can in a book.’
CHAPTER X
A PROVINCIAL CARNIVAL
The last week of March at length arrived, by which time the nights had grown perceptibly colder, and the morning air was by no means so mild as to render wraps unnecessary.
No rain had fallen for some weeks, though before that time there had been a succession of showers; so that, there being no dust, while the weather was simply perfect, the grass green, and the sky cloudless, a more untoward time might have been selected for recreation.
It was indeed the carnival of a community of uncompromising toilers, as were, in good sooth, the majority of the inhabitants of the town and district of Yass.
Not without misgiving did Wilfred consent to leave the homestead entirely to itself. Yet he told himself that, while the farm and dairy were in the hands of such capable persons as Dick Evans, old Tom, and Andrew, without some kind of social or physical earthquake, no damage could occur.
Dick, in spite of his love of excitement, did not care to attend this race meeting. Aware of his weakness, he was unwilling to enter on a fresh bout of dissipation before the effects of the last one had faded from recollection. ‘I looks to have a week about Michaelmas,’ said he, as gravely as if he had been planning a hunting or fishing excursion, ‘then I reckon to hold on till after harvest, or just afore Christmas comes in. Two sprees a year is about the right thing for a man that knows himself. I don’t hold with knockin’ about bars and shanties.’
Crede old Tom, the last Yass races had chiefly impressed themselves on his mind as a festivity wherein he spent ‘thirty-seven pounds ten in six days, and broke his collar-bone riding a hurdle race. Whether he was getting older he could not say, but he felt as if he did not care to go in just now. He was going to keep right till next Christmas, when, of course, any man worth calling a man would naturally go in for a big drink.’
For far other reasons, and in widely differing language, did Andrew Cargill protest his disinclination to join revelries which, based on the senseless sport of horse-racing, he felt to be indefensible, immoral, and worthy only of the heathen, who were so unsparingly extirpated by the children of Israel. ‘I haena words to express my scorn for thae fearless follies, and I thocht that the laird and the mistress wad ha’ had mair sense than to gang stravaigin’ ower the land like a wheen player-bodies to gie their coontenance to siccan snares o’ Beelzebub. It’s juist fearsome.’