“Well, let us hope that such times won’t come again,” said Jack, beginning to be unpleasantly affected by the idea of an interview with Mr. Shrood, in which he should be compelled to inform him that the season had been fatal to his whole crop of lambs, and the greater part of his aged ewes. “Every one says the seasons have changed, and that the climate is more moist than it used to be.”
“I am not so sure of that,” said his host, who was not prone to take much heed of “what everybody said.” “I see no very precise data upon which to found such an assertion. What has been may be again. We shall have another dry season within the next five years, as sure as my name is Mark Stangrove. What do you think of those horses? That is rather a fancy mob. I see Maud’s horse Mameluke among them. We must run them in.”
“How do you reconcile it to your conscience to keep such unprofitable wretches as horses?” inquired Jack, “eating the grass of sheep and cattle, and being totally unsaleable themselves, unfit to eat, and hardly worth boiling down.”
“I am grieved to appear so old-fashioned and ignorant,” said Mark, “but I have a sentiment about these horses, and really they don’t pay so badly. They are the direct descendants, now numbered by hundreds, of an old family stud. They cost nothing in the way of labour; they need no shepherd or stockman: they are simply branded up every year. You couldn’t drive them off the run if you tried. And every now and then there springs up a demand, and I clear a lot of them off. It is all found money, and it tells up.”
“Meanwhile, the grass they eat would feed ten thousand sheep.”
“That is perfectly true; but of course I make no scruple of putting the sheep on their favourite haunts when hard up. Horses, you see, can pick up a living anywhere. Besides, I have always remarked that each of the great divisions of stock has its turn once or twice in a decade, if not oftener. You have only, therefore, to wait, and you get your ‘pull.’ My next ‘pull’ with the stud will be when the Indian horse market has to be supplied by us, as it must some day.”
“You seem a good hand at waiting,” said Jack. “I don’t know but that your philosophy is sound. I can’t put faith in it however.”
“Everything comes to him who waits, as the French adage goes,” said Stangrove. “I have always found it tolerably correct. However here we are at home. So we’ll put this lot into the yard, and I’ll lead up the old horse with a spare rein. We must have a ride out to Murdering Lake tomorrow; it’s our show bit of scenery.”
“Another eventful day over, Mr. Redgrave,” said Maud, as they met at the tea-table. “Yesterday the sheep were lost; to-day the sheep are found. So passes our life on the Warroo.”
“You’re an ungrateful, naughty girl, Maud,” said Mrs. Stangrove. “Think how relieved poor Mark must be after all his hard work and anxiety. Suppose he had lost a hundred.”