It was in vain to expect much general conversation that day. If the visitors had been less sympathetic persons they might easily have been aggrieved at the predominance of Hubert’s personal adventures, opinions and experiences in all subsequent intercourse.
For the moment, everybody thought him much altered and changed, wasted even in frame, sunburned, blackened by exposure, but, on the whole, improved. There was a determination in his expression which had not so habitually marked his features before—a look as of a man who has confronted the grim hazards of the waste—who has dared the odds which in the desert land of the savage are arrayed against him; dared them only to conquer. It was the face of the conscript after the campaign and the battle-field. If there was less than the old measure of schoolboy gaiety and frolicsome spirits, there was an added infusion of the dignity of the man.
Then his adventures. He must relate some of them. Even Miss Dacre joined in this request. Like the knife-grinder, “story he had none to tell,” but could not escape owning to having been laid up in a bark hut with fever and ague, that had pulled him down so; nearly drowned in crossing a flooded river; had a brush with the blacks, who rose up from the tall grass all round him; horse speared under him, and so on. All this, though Hubert made light of it with characteristic modesty, seemed to his hearers of the nature of thrilling and exciting romance.
“Hubert must feel like a troubadour of the Middle Ages,” said Linda, “reciting before the lady of the castle and her maidens. It must have been an awful temptation to improvise situations, and I dare say they did. Fancy if we had no books, and were dependent entirely upon wandering minstrels!”
“It mightn’t be altogether such a bad thing, Miss Linda,” said Barrington Hope. “A handsome young troubadour would be more entertaining than a dry book, or even an indifferent novel.”
“It wouldn’t be such a bad trade for the unemployed,” said Laura; “but I suspect neither their manners nor their education would be found suitable.”
“Some of the swagmen in Queensland would fill the requirements so far,” said Hubert. “I have seen more than one ‘honourable’ on the tramp. Only it would not do to trust them too near the sideboard.”
“What a pathetic picture,” said Miss Dacre; “fancy the son of a peer trudging along the road, with his knapsack on his back, actually begging from door to door!”
“It is not regarded as begging in outside country,” said Hubert. “It is the recognised mode of locomotion for labourers and artisans.”
“And can they not procure steady employment?” said Miss Dacre, in a tone of deep anxiety. “Surely it only needs some one to take an interest in them, and give them good advice. Now, don’t smile in that provoking way, Mr. Stamford, or I shall think you have brought back unimpaired one of your least amiable traits.”