A few trials and experiments of a like nature were indulged in by the younger cavaliers before they reached town, most of which were satisfactory, with one exception, in which the horse by a sudden and wily baulk sent his rider over the fence, and calmly surveyed the obstacle himself.
Another dance, at which everybody who had been at the races, and who was du monde, finished worthily the day so auspiciously commenced. Wilfred Effingham, who had declared himself rather fatigued at the first entertainment, and had at that festival asserted that it would do for a week, now commenced to enjoy himself con amore—to sun himself in the light of Christabel Rockley’s eyes, and to badiner with Mrs. Snowden, as if life was henceforth to be compounded of equal quantities of race meetings by day and dances by night.
‘I suppose you are a little tired, Miss Rockley,’ he said, ‘after the riding and the picnic and the races; it is rather fatiguing.’
‘Tired!’ echoed the Australian damsel in astonishment. ‘Why should I be tired? What is the use of giving in before the week is half over? I shall have lots of time to rest and enjoy the pleasure of one’s own society after you have all gone. It will be dull enough then for a month or two.’
‘But are there any more festivities in progress?’ he asked with some surprise.
‘Any more? Why, of course, lots and quantities. You English people must be made of sugar or salt. Why, there’s the race ball to-morrow night, at which everybody will be present—the band all the way from Sydney. The race dinner the next night—only for you gentlemen, of course, we shall go to bed early. Then Mrs. Bower’s picnic on Saturday, with a dance here till twelve o’clock—I must get the clock put back, I think. And Sunday——’
‘Sunday! haven’t you any entertainment provided for Sunday?’
‘Well, no; not exactly. But everybody will go to church in the morning, and Mr. Sternworth will preach us one of his nice sensible sermons—they do me so much good—about not allowing innocent pleasures to take too great hold upon our hearts. In the afternoon we are all going for a long, long walk to the Fern-tree Dell. You’ll come, won’t you? It’s such a lovely place. And on Monday——’
‘Of course we shall begin all over again on Monday; keep on dancing, racing, and innocently flirting, like inland Flying Dutchmen, for ever and ever, as long as we hold together. Isn’t that the intention?’
‘Now you’re beginning to laugh at me. It will be serious for some of us when you all go away. Don’t you think so, now?’ (Here the accompaniment was a look of such distracting pathos that Wilfred was ready to deliver an address on ‘Racing considered as the chief end of man,’ without further notice.) ‘No; on Monday morning you are all to pay your bills at the Budgeree—those that have money enough, I mean; not that it matters—Bowker will wait for ever, they say. Then you go back to your stations, and work like good boys till the next excuse for coming into Yass, and that finishes up the week nicely, doesn’t it?’