“Forty-two thousand sheep, and station, at a pound,” said Jack to himself, “leave a considerable margin; so I needn’t bother myself. Here goes. It will never be acted upon—that is one comfort.”
So the name of John Redgrave was duly appended, and Mr. Smith wrote his name as witness without the least embarrassment. He regarded squatters who required accommodation as patients subject to mild attacks of epidemic disease, which usually gave way to proper medical, that is to say financial, treatment. Occasionally the patient succumbed. That however was not his affair. Let them all find it out for themselves.
He had many a time and oft envied the bronzed squatter lounging in on a bright morning, throwing down a cheque and stuffing the five-pound notes carelessly into his waistcoat-pocket. But, young as he was, he had more than once seen a careworn, grizzled man waiting outside the bank parlour, with ill-concealed anxiety for the interview which was to tell him whether or not he went forth a ruined and hopelessly broken man. Nothing could have been more soothing than the manner in which the whole operation of the mortgage had been performed. Still it was an operation, and Jack felt a sensation difficult to describe, but tending towards the conviction that he was not quite the same man as he had been previously. He was not in his usual spirits at dinner that evening, though of his two sharers of that well-cooked, yet not extravagant repast, Hautley had ordered it, and Jerningham was by odds the neatest talker then in town. The wine somehow wasn’t like last week’s. Must have opened a new batch. He had no luck at billiards. He sat moodily in an arm-chair in the smoking-room, and heard not some of the best (and least charitable) things going. He mooned off to bed, out of harmony with existing society.
“What the dickens is up with Redgrave?” asked little Prowler of old Snubham, of the Indian Irregular Force. “He looks as black as thunder, and hasn’t a word to say for himself.”
“A very fine trait in a man’s character,” growled Snubham; “half the people one meets jabber everlastingly, Heaven knows. What would be the matter with him? Proposed to some girl, and is afraid she’ll accept him. A touch of liver, perhaps. Nothing else can happen to a man at the present day, sir.”
“Must be a woman, I think; he was awful spoony on Dolly Drosera. He’s too rich to want money,” said Prowler, with a reverential awe of the squatter proper.
“Humph! don’t know—wool’s down, I believe. He pays up at loo. Beyond that I have no curiosity. Very ungentlemanlike thing, curiosity. Mornin’, Prowler.”
CHAPTER IX.
“A perfect woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort and command.”—Wordsworth.