“Well, nothing just at present. In a general way, sell off surplus stock as soon as you can do so profitably. But in a dry season everybody wishes to sell, and few care to buy except at the lowest prices. However, I’ll put you up to the likeliest dodges when the time comes.”
“Thanks very much. I can’t help feeling anxious from time to time when I think that our all is embarked in this undertaking. I thought it was so safe and solid, and never dreamed that there could be such a swindle worked when all looked fair outside. The governor was rash, I must say. It’s a way of his. But we must fight our way out of the scrape, now we’re in it.”
“That’s the only thing to be done, and not to lose heart. There are always chances and changes with stock in Australia. Fortunes are always to be made.”
“And to be lost, it seems. You are just going to invest in Queensland, I hear. Isn’t that a long way off?”
“It’s never too far off if the country’s good,” said Hubert. “Runs are cheap there now, but they are always rising in value. I intend to send a lot of our Windāhgil sheep out there as soon as we get settled.”
“If we hadn’t spent all our money,” said the young Englishman regretfully, “we might have bought a run there too. However, it can’t be helped, as we said before. I shall be glad to hear from you when you get there.”
“Any information I can give shall be at your service, as well as all possible assistance,” said Hubert, warmly. “Always depend upon that. But it’s early in the day to talk about such things. We shall see more clearly what to do as the occasion arises. And now, we had better join the ladies.”
It was settled after a rather animated discussion that the visitors were not to return to Wantabalree that night. In vain they pleaded household tasks, station exigencies, the anxiety which Colonel Dacre was certain to experience at their absence. All these reasons were treated as mere excuses. There couldn’t be much housekeeping for one person, especially as they had, for a wonder, a decent cook. The station could wait, the less work done among the sheep at present, the better; while it was extracted in cross-examination that Colonel Dacre had told them that if they did not return, he should conclude they had stayed at Windāhgil. So the truce was definitely arranged, the horses turned into the river paddock, the young men went out for a drive in Hubert’s buggy to inspect a dam “at the back,” concerning which young Dacre had expressed some interest, while the three girls, after a ramble in the garden, settled down to a good steady afternoon’s needlework and an exhaustive discussion of bush life, and Australian matters generally.
“What a famous, light-running, easy trap this is of yours!” said Dacre, as they spun over the smooth, sandy bush track, Whalebone and Whipcord, an exceptionally fast pair of horses, slipping along at half-speed.
“Yes,” said Hubert. “It’s the best thing of the kind that’s made, I believe. I bought this to take out with me to the new country. I think it is economical to have a vehicle of this sort. There are many bits of station work that a buggy comes in for, and you save horseflesh. I wonder you don’t get one for your sister.”