“Well! forewarned is forearmed,” said the colonel. “I feel deeply indebted to you, but your conduct has been in marked contrast to that of all the other residents to whom I have spoken on the subject.”
“Unfortunately, there is too much caution or apathy in matters of this sort,” said Mr. Stamford. “We should have been delighted to have you as a neighbour, believe me, but not at such cost to yourself.”
CHAPTER XII
About a week after this conversation Hubert dropped the local paper he was reading in the evening with such a sudden exclamation that his mother and sisters looked up in mild astonishment.
“‘Well I’m gormed!’ as Dan Peggotty has it!” he said at length. “Nothing will ever surprise me again as long as there is such a crop of fools in the world—no wonder that rogues like Dealerson flourish! After all I said too! Listen to this! headed ‘Important Sale of Station.—We have much pleasure in noticing that our energetic and popular neighbour, Mr. Dealerson, has completed the sale of his well-known station, Wantabalree, with fifty-four thousand six hundred sheep of a superior character, to Colonel Dacre, a gentleman lately arrived from England. Furniture, stores, station, horses and cattle given in. The price is said to be satisfactory.’ Well, the devil helps some people,” said Hubert. “How that poor gentleman could have run into the snare blindfold after the talking to father and I gave him, I can’t make out. Mark my words; he’s a dead man (financially) unless it’s going to rain for years.”
“Dealerson is a very astute man,” remarked Mr. Stamford, musingly. “As a persuasive talker he has few equals. Fine, frank, engaging manner too. Bold and ready-witted; I think I can see how he managed it.”
“Well I can’t see—can’t make it out at all,” said Hubert, “unless he is a mesmerist.”
“No doubt he made the most of being on bad terms with Windāhgil. He would rake up that old story of the disputed sheep; tell it his own way; get that fellow Ospreigh, who always goes about with him, to back him up; also make small concessions such as furniture and working plant; talk about the house and garden—they would be attractive to a new arrival; and if Colonel Dacre is at all impulsive—and I think he is—he has thus landed him. I wonder what the Colonel will think of Dealerson about three years from this time?”
“I’ll tell him what I think of him, the next time we meet in public,” said Hubert, squaring his shoulders, while a dangerous light came into his eyes. “If he could be tempted into giving me the lie, I should like to have the pleasure of thrashing him.”
“Gently, my boy!” said Mr. Stamford; “we must not set up ourselves as the redressers of wrongs for Lower Mooramah, Few people are in a position to discharge the duties of that appointment. I honour your righteous indignation all the same, and trust you will always retain an honest scorn of wrong and wrongdoers.”