‘Well, you will have another lady in the house to fill Beatrice’s place, and help to amuse your guests. She is quite equal to a pair of ordinary young ladies in the matter of rational conversation, perhaps more.’
‘So Mr. Argyll thinks, evidently,’ said Annabel; ‘he paid her the greatest attention once he met her over here. I know she thinks him very clever and distinguished-looking. They would suit one another famously.’
‘I don’t think so at all,’ said Wilfred shortly. ‘But I must get away to my work.’
CHAPTER XXVI
THE RETURN FROM PALESTINE
Matters had been pleasant enough in the early days at Lake William, and the Benmohr men considered that nothing could be more perfect than their old life there. But this new region was so much more extensive, with a half-unknown grandeur, rendering existence more picturesque and exciting in every way. There were possibilities of fortunes being made, of cities being built, of a great Dominion in the future—vast though formless visions, which dwarfed the restricted aims of the elder colony. Such aspirations tended to dissuade them from residing permanently in their former homesteads.
But they were coming back for a last visit—a long farewell. There were friends to see, adventures to relate, transactions to arrange. A pleasant change from their wild-wood life, an intoxicating novelty; but once experienced, they must depart to return no more.
The absentees did not await Christmas proper, but arrived beforehand, having tempted the main in the yacht Favourite, sailing master Commodore Kirsopp, R.N., from Melbourne. Such passengers as Ned White, Jack Fletcher, Tom Carne, and Alick Gambier offered such an irresistible combination.
Once more the homesteads around Lake William appeared to awaken and put on their former hospitable expression. Mrs. Teviot had scrubbed and burnished away at Benmohr, until when ‘her gentlemen’ arrived, welcomed with tears of joy, they declared themselves afraid to take possession of their own house, so magnificently furnished and spotlessly clean did it appear to them after their backwoods experience.
Mr. Churbett stood gazing at his books in speechless admiration (he averred) for half an hour; afterwards inspecting his stable and Grey Surrey’s loose-box with feelings of wonder and appreciation. Neil Barrington declared that he was again a schoolboy at home for the holidays, not a day older than fourteen, and thereupon indulged himself in so many pranks and privileges proper to his assumed age that Mrs. Teviot scolded him for a graceless laddie, and threatened to box his ears, particularly when he kissed her assistant, an apple-cheeked damsel lured from one of the neighbouring farms in order to help in her work at this tremendous crisis.
Guy Effingham was hardly recognisable, so his sisters declared, in the stalwart youngster who galloped up to The Chase in company with Gerald O’More, whom he had invited to spend Christmas in his father’s house. There was the old mischievous, merry expression of the eyes, the frank smile for those he loved; but all save his forehead was burned several shades darker, and a thick-coming growth of whisker and moustache had changed the boyish lineaments and placed in their stead the sterner regard of manhood.