‘The best-dressed people are not the most backward at work or fighting,’ said Wilfred.
‘But how can he keep his hands white,’ inquired Annabel with a great appearance of interest, ‘if he really works like a labourer?’
‘Perhaps he works in gloves; a man can get through a great deal of work in a pair of old riding-gloves, and his hands be never the worse. There is something about those two men that I like extremely. Mr. Argyll puts me in mind of Fergus MʻIvor with that fiery glance; he looks as if he had a savage temper, well held in.’
‘They are both very nice, and I hope you will make real friends of them, Wilfred,’ said Mrs. Effingham. ‘Might I also suggest that, as it is evidently practicable to dress like a gentleman and work hard, a certain young man should be more careful of his appearance?’
‘I deserve that, I know, old lady,’ said her son laughingly; ‘but really there is a temptation in the wilderness to costume a little. I promise you to amend.’
‘Our circle of acquaintance is expanding,’ said Beatrice; ‘certainly it has the charm of variety. Mr. O’Desmond is Irish, Mr. Churbett from London, our last visitors Scots—one Highland, one Lowland. All differing among themselves too. I am sure we shall be fully occupied; it will be a task of some delicacy tenir de salon, if we ever have them here at a party.’
‘A party!’ said Mrs. Effingham; ‘don’t think of it for years to come, child. It would be impossible, inappropriate in every way.’
‘But there’s no harm, mamma, surely, in thinking of it,’ pleaded Annabel. ‘It encourages one to keep alive, if nothing else.’
CHAPTER VI
AN AUSTRALIAN YEOMAN
A week of laborious work preceded the day when circumstances permitted Wilfred and his serving-man to ride forth for the purpose of attending the sale of Mr. Michael Donnelly’s stock and effects. Formerly known as ‘Willoughby’s Mick,’ he had, during an unpretending career as stock-rider for that gentleman, accumulated a small herd of cattle and horses, with which to commence life on a grazing farm near Yass. Here, by exercise of the strictest economy as to personal expenses, as well as from the natural increase of stock, he had, during a residence of a dozen years, amassed a considerable property. Yet on his holding there was but scant evidence of toil or contrivance. A few straggling peach trees represented the garden. The bark-roofed slab hut which he found when he came had sufficed for the lodging of himself and wife, with nearly a dozen children. The fences, not originally good, were now ruinous. The fields, suffered to go out of cultivation, lay fallow and unsightly, only half-cleared of tree-stumps. The dress of this honest yeoman had altered for the worse since the hard-riding days of ‘Willoughby’s Mick.’ The healthy boys and girls were more or less ragged; the younger ones barefooted. The saddles and cart harness were patched with raw hide, or clumsily repaired. The cow-shed was rickety; the calves unsheltered. Yet with all this apparent decay and disorder, any one, judging from appearances, who had put down Michael Donnelly as an impoverished farmer, would have been egregiously deceived. His neighbours knew that his battered old cabbage-tree hat covered a head with an unusual amount of brains. Uneducated and bush-bred, he possessed intuitive powers of calculation and forecast frequently denied to cultured individuals. Early in life he had appropriated the fact, that in this land of boundless pasturage, profitable up to a certain point, without the necessity of one farthing of expenditure, the multiplication of stock was possible to any conceivable extent. Once make a commencement with a few cows, and it was a man’s own fault if he died without more cattle than he could count. Hadn’t Johnny Shore begun that way? Walked over to Monaro with half-a-crown in his pocket. He saved his wages for a few years and got the needful start.