'If you will undertake the task,' replied the neophyte, with a sudden gleam in his dark eyes which for an instant lighted up the somewhat sombre countenance, 'I will promise to commit all the errors you may think necessary.'
'As to that, we'll see,' answered the damsel, with a fine affectation of carelessness. 'I make no promises. We shall have plenty of time—Oh, dear! what quantities of it we do waste here—to find out all one another's bad qualities. Shall we not, Harold?'
'I have never made any discoveries of the sort, Miss Devereux,' said the young man; 'I can't answer, of course, for the result of your explorations.'
'I couldn't find anything bad in you,' said the girl eagerly, 'if I tried for a century. That's the worst of it. You always put me in the wrong. Doesn't he, mother? There's no satisfaction in quarrelling with him.'
'Why should you quarrel if it comes to that?' queried the matron, with a wistful glance at her child. 'You only differ in opinion occasionally, I observe.'
'Why, because quarrelling is one of the necessities—I should almost say luxuries—of existence,' retorted the young lady. 'What would life be without it? Think of the pleasure of making it up. I should die if I didn't quarrel with somebody now and then.'
'Or talk nonsense occasionally, as your cousin has doubtless by this time observed,' answered her mother. 'I think we may adjourn to the drawing-room.'
The drawing-room in this case meant the verandah, in which luxurious retreat the little party soon ensconced themselves.
'Really,' remarked Devereux, as he lit a cigar and abandoned himself to the inner depths of a Cingalese chair, 'if there was a little motion, I could fancy we were in the Red Sea. Same sky, same stars, same mild temperature, and tobacco. This is very different from the stern realities of colonial life I had pictured to myself.'
'We don't give ourselves out as industrial martyrs,' remarked Atherstone placidly, 'but you will probably find out that bush life is not all beer and skittles.'