At the commencement of the conversation Mrs. Devereux had turned pale. The sad memories of the past were awakened. She took the first opportunity of retiring with her daughter, leaving the young men to their argument.
'And what have you done with yourself all the time?' said Pollie to her cousin, as they sat at breakfast next morning. 'It does seem so hard to have been shut up here while we were in Fairy-land—were we not, mother?' she said, appealing to Mrs. Devereux, who sat in her place with rather an abstracted air.
'What were you saying, my dear? Oh! yes, delightful, was it not? I was just thinking that we need not have hurried back. Did you go anywhere, Bertram, or see any society in our absence?'
'I went to Bourke for a fortnight?' he answered, with a smile in which there was more sarcasm than merriment. 'I was afraid to trust myself within the fascination of real civilisation, so I declined Melbourne or Sydney.'
'And what did you think of that desert city?' inquired Pollie, with mock humility. 'Did Your Royal Highness find anybody fit to talk to?'
'It struck me as a queer place,' he said. 'You could not expect me to have seen anything like it before. But it wasn't bad in its way. The weather was glorious. The men were better than I expected. Rather fast, perhaps. Their manners lacked repose. They took care no one else should have any, as they kept it up all night most of the time I was there. One young fellow jumped his horse over the hotel bar—a thing I had previously taken to be pure fiction, on the American pattern.'
'That's rather old-fashioned bush pleasantry,' said Pollie; 'he must have been very young. How did the horse like it?'
'I don't know, but he did it cleverly. I expected to see both their necks broken and the smash general; but all came right by a miracle, and the fellow won his bet—twenty pounds. I heard him make it.'
'And was that the only style of society you encountered?' queried Pollie, with a disdainful and disapproving air. 'You could have enjoyed that at Wannonbah.'