‘You are to have a half share also, and the old man wills the whole to you, in case of accidents? That looks well.’
‘I’m sure if you saw him, and them, you would think more of the affair.’
‘Very likely—(thoughtfully). Now, suppose you drive in to-morrow, instead of riding, and take me to lunch with Mrs. Herbert? I can see old Waters and drop into the Bank besides. Then I’ll say what I propose. I’d like to think it over—and now, it’s nearly bedtime—I suppose you want to smoke?’
Mr. Banneret was a reasonable, though not an [17] ]inveterate smoker. He told himself that if ever a man needed the great sedative and composer of thought, this was one of the periods specially suggested by Fate. So he sat for nearly an hour before the fire in the dining-room, and meditatively smoked a couple of pipes of ‘rough cut,’ after which, his habitation being within a few miles of a populous goldfield, and not in a highly civilised and police-guarded city, he went to bed without locking a door or securing a window.
‘They know there’s nothing worth taking in the house of a Police Magistrate—why should they run the risk of a bullet or a gaol?’ he was wont to reply, when taxed by his wife with leaving the front door or the dining-room window open; and as no one ever essayed to break through and steal during their ten years’ sojourn in Barrawong, his argument apparently had force.
Since dawn he had been in Court or office for eight or nine hours—had ridden ten miles and walked five, so that when eleven o’clock came, he had done a fair day’s work. As a consequence, he slept soundly until cockcrow, when he arose with a clear head and renewed faculties, ready for whatever duties might be cast upon him.
The family breakfast concluded, the boys had been despatched to school, the girls to the daily ministrations of the governess, and the infantry division duly provided for, when Mr. and Mrs. Banneret departed for Barrawong, in the buggy of the period, behind a pair of extremely useful nags, moderate as to condition, to which the grass of the field had chiefly contributed, but exceptional [18] ]as to pace and courage. They were equally good in single or double harness, in saddle also, the near-side horse carrying Mrs. Banneret, who was a daring rider, with ease and distinction, while no pair within a hundred miles could, as to road action, ‘see the way they went.’ So the groom phrased it. They were, in fact, the Commissioner’s chief treasures and possessions. It was idle to lock up the house while these invaluable animals were left in an open paddock. Years since, when robbed by bushrangers, he had shivered in his shoes, not from personal apprehension, but for fear that the marauders should take a fancy to Hector, or Paris, and felt quite grateful when they only relieved him of a couple of gold watches, which he happened to have about him.
When, therefore, as the clock struck nine, Mr. and Mrs. Banneret rattled out of the front gate, at the rate of twelve miles an hour, old Hector holding up his head, and sending out his forelegs, as if he wanted to do the two hundred miles to the metropolis in forty-eight hours—the spirits of the ‘leading lady’ and the hero, in what might be a successful melodrama or a tragedy, as the Fates should decree, visibly rose.
‘Feels like old times, doesn’t it? This turnout was new when we were married. How we used to rattle about! Now we’re a dozen years older, and still “going strong,” thank God! Steady, Hector! what an old Turk you are to pull!’
‘Yes, my dear,’ said the lady, looking softly in [19] ]his face, with an added lustre in her dark eyes—‘we have not done so badly, considering we lost every penny in the world not long after that interesting event. We have known hard times, but as long as you and the children are well, and we can give them a decent education, I care for nothing. But we are going to risk nearly everything again, it seems to me—poor Hector and Paris too! It’s a plunge, isn’t it?’