“This is a wonderful country, and you’re a wonderful young woman. I haven’t time to analyse you, just now, for my affairs, which I had intended to treat to a short holiday, are conspiring to hurry me up. At what hour can I leave in the morning?”
“To-morrow?” said the girl, and her face changed. “You don’t mean to say you’re going away to-morrow?”
“Sorry to say I must; you saw that I got a telegram, and if I don’t clear, as your people say, I may lose thousands, perhaps a fortune.”
“The coach goes at six, sharp; and gets to the railway-station at the same hour the next morning. You’d like breakfast first, I suppose?”
“It’s too early to ask you to have it ready—anything will do.”
“Oh! I daresay. You’ve had some decent meals here, haven’t you?”
“Never better in my life.”
“Well, you’ll go away to-morrow, fit and ready for as long a day’s work as ever you did. It’s almost a pity you’re having the Sergeant to dine. However, he’ll not stay late. I’ll send over and take your coach tickets. You’d better have everything packed and ready this afternoon. Cobb and Co. wait for nothing and nobody.”
“There’s no doubt (Mr. Blount told himself) that the conditions of life in Her Majesty’s colonies tend to the development of the individual with a completeness undreamed of in our narrow and perhaps slightly prejudiced insular life. What a difference there is between this young woman and a girl of her rank of life in any part of Britain. What energy, intelligence, organising power she has; I feel certain that she could rally a wavering regiment on a pinch, drive a coach, ride a race, or swim a river, in fact do all sorts of things, as well as, ay, better than, the ordinary man. This is going to be a great country, and the Australians a great people—arts of war and peace, and so on. How good-looking she is, too,” concluding his reflections with this profound observation, which showed that in spite of his subjective turn of mind, the primary emotions still held sway.
Mr. Blount betook himself to his packing with such concentration, that by the time he had finished his letters, nothing remained of his impedimenta, but such as could be easily carried out and packed in the coach, while he was finishing a distinctly early breakfast.