The day was gone when Jack was made aware, by certain signs and hieroglyphics, known to all bushmen, that he was approaching a station. The pasture was closely cropped and bare. Converging tracks of horses, sheep, and cattle obviously trended in one direction. At some distance upon the open plain he could see a shepherd with his flock, slowly moving towards a point of timber more than a mile in advance of his present position. “I shall come upon the paddock fence just inside that timber,” he remarked to himself, “and the house will probably be within sight of the slip-rails. It will not be a very large paddock, I will undertake to say.”
This turned out to be a correct calculation. He saw the sheep-yard, towards which the flock was heading, as he reached the timber. He descried the paddock fence and the slip-rail in the road; and within sight—as he put up the rails and mustered a couple of temporary pegs, for fear of accidents—was a roomy wooden building surrounded by a garden.
Riding up to the garden gate, he was announced as “Mr. Stranger” by about twenty dogs, who gave the fullest exercise to their lungs, and would doubtless have gone even further had Jack been on foot. A tall, sun-burned man, in an old shooting-coat, appeared upon the verandah, and, making straight through the excited pack, greeted Redgrave warmly.
“Won’t you get off and come in? I’ll take your horses. [Hold your row, you barking fools!] Oh! it is you, Mr. Redgrave; from Gondaree, I think—met you at Barrabri—very glad to see you; of course you have come to stay? Allow me to take the led horse.”
“I think I promised to look you up some day,” said Jack. “I took advantage of a lull in station-work and—here I am.”
“Very glad indeed you have made your visit out, though I don’t know that I have much to show you. But, as we are neighbours, we ought to become acquainted.”
The horses were led over to a small but tolerably snug stable, where they were regaled with hay previous to being turned out in the paddock, and then Jack was ushered into the house. Mr. Stangrove was a married man; so much was evident from the first; many traces of the “pug-wuggies, or little people,” were apparent; and a girl crossing the yard with a baby in her arms supplied any evidence that might be missing.
“Will you have a glass of grog after your ride?” inquired the host, “or would you like to go to your room?”
Jack preferred the latter, being one of those persons who decline to eat or drink until they are in a comfortable and becoming state of mind and body; holding it to be neither epicurean nor economical to “muddle away appetite” under circumstances which preclude all proper and befitting appreciation.
So Redgrave performed his ablutions, and, having arrayed himself in luxuriously-easy garments and evening shoes, made his way to the sitting-room. He had just concluded “a long, cool drink” when two ladies entered.