‘Now I won’t have any explanations till I’ve shown you to my mother and the girls. How astonished they will be!’
They were certainly astonished. So much so, indeed, that Mr. O’More began to ask why it should be so much more surprising that he came than themselves.
‘But we were ruined,’ said Annabel, ‘and would not have had anything to eat soon, or should have had to go to Boulogne—fancy what horror!’
‘And am I, Gerald O’More, such a degenerate Irish gentleman that I can’t be ruined as nately and complately as any ancestor that ever frightened a sub-sheriff?’ (Here they all laughed at his serio-comic visage.) ‘In sober earnest, I was ruined, not entirely by my own fault, but so handily that when the old place was sold there was nothing left over but the lodge at Luggie-law, where you and I used to fish and shoot and drink potheen, Wilfred, in cold evenings.’
‘Why not live there, then? I’m sure we were snug enough.’
‘Why not?’ said O’More—and as he spoke his features assumed a sterner, more elevated expression—‘because I wouldn’t turn myself into a poor gentleman, with a few hangers-on, and a career contemptibly limited either for good or evil. No! I’d seen many a good fellow, once the genial sportsman and boon companion, change into the lounger and sot. So I packed my gun and personal possessions, put the lodge in my pocket, and here I am, with all the world of Australia before me.’
‘A manly resolve,’ said Mr. Effingham, ‘and I honour you for it, my dear boy. You find us in the midst of a disastrous season, but those who know the land say that the next change must be for the better. You will like all our friends, and enjoy the free life of the bush before you are a month at it. Australia is said, also—though we have not found such to be the case lately—to be an easy country to make money in.’
‘So I have found already,’ said O’More.
‘How?’ said everybody in a breath. ‘You can’t have had any experience in money-making as yet.’
‘Indeed have I,’ said the newly-arrived one. ‘Why, the first day I came to Sydney I bought a half-broke, well-bred colt for a trifle, and as I came through Yass I exchanged him for the horse I am now riding and a ten-pound note.’