“We have heard of all your wonders and miracles, haven’t we, Jane? I don’t know what we should have done in the wilderness here without the Gondaree news.”
“I was not aware that I was so happy as to furnish interesting incidents for the country generally,” answered Jack; “but it would have given me fresh life if I had only thought that Mrs. and Miss Stangrove were sympathetical with my progress.”
“You would have been rather flattered, then,” said Stangrove, who was a downright sort of personage, “if you had heard the lamentations of these ladies over your woolshed—indeed, Maud said that——”
“Come, Mark,” said Miss Stangrove, eagerly, and with the very becoming improvement of a sudden blush, “we don’t need your clumsy version of all our talk for the last year. Nobody ever does anything upon this antediluvian stream from one century to another, and of course Jane and I felt grieved that a spirited reformer like Mr. Redgrave should meet with so heavy a loss—didn’t we, Jane?”
“Of course we did, my dear,” said that matron, placidly; “and Mark, too, he said the wicked men who did it ought to be hanged, and that Judge Lynch was a very useful institution. He was quite ferocious.”
“Thanks very many; I am sure I feel deeply grateful. I had no idea I had so many well-wishers,” quoth Jack, casting his eyes in the direction of Miss Maud. “It comforts one under affliction and—all that, you know.”
“How you must look down upon us, with our shepherds and old-world ways,” said Maud. “You come from Victoria, do you not, Mr. Redgrave? We Sydney people believe that you are all Yankees down there, and wear bowie-knives and guns, and calculate, and so on.”
“Really, Miss Stangrove,” pleaded Jack, “you are indicting me upon several charges at once; which am I to answer? I don’t look very supercilious, do I? though I admit hailing from Victoria, which is chiefly peopled by persons of British birth, whatever may be the prevailing impression.”
“Well, you will have an opportunity of discussing the matter—the shepherds, I mean—with my brother, who is a strong conservative. I give you leave to convert him, if you can. We have hitherto found it impossible, haven’t we, Mark?”
“Mark has generally good reasons for his opinions,” said the loyal wife, looking approvingly at her lord and master—who, indeed, was very like a man who could hold his own in any species of encounter. “But suppose we have a little music—you might play La Bouquetière.”