“You must all come and see me before shearing,” rejoined he. “I shall make a stand on my rights in etiquette, and refuse to come again before you have ‘returned my call,’ as ladies say. I have several novelties beside the fencing to show, which might interest even ladies. I hope you won’t give Stangrove any rest till he promises to bring you.”
“We have a natural curiosity to see all the new world you are reported to have made,” Maud said, “and even your model overseer, Mr. M‘Nab. He must surely be one of the ‘coming race,’ and have any quantity of ‘vril’ at command. I suppose the land will be filled with such products of a higher civilization after we early Arcadians are abolished.”
“You must come and see, Miss Stangrove. I will tell you nothing. M‘Nab is the ideal general-of-division in the grand army of labour, to my fancy. But whether it is to be Waterloo or Walcheren the future must decide. Au revoir!”
He shook hands with Stangrove, and, mounting, departed with his brace of hackneys for the trifling day’s ride between there and home. Truth to tell, he tested the mettle of his steeds much more shrewdly than in his leisurely downward course. It was nearer to eight hours than nine when he reined up before the home-paddock gate of Gondaree.
Returning to one’s own particular abode and domicile is not always an unmixed joy, however much imaginative writers have insisted upon the aspect. “The watchdog’s honest bay” occasionally displays a want of recognition calculated to irritate the sensitive mind. Evidence is sometimes forced upon the unwilling revenant of the proverbial and unwarrantable playing of mice in the absence of the lord of the castle, who is thereby unpleasantly reminded that he occupies substantially the position of the cat. Possibly he is greeted with the unwelcome announcement that an important business interview has lapsed by reason of his absence. It may be that he finds his household absent at an entertainment, thus causing him to moralize upon desolate hearthstones and shattered statuettes, while he is gloomily performing for himself the minor offices so promptly bestowed on more fortunate arrivals. Or fate, being in one of her dark moods—a subtle prescience of evil, only too true—meets him on the threshold, and he enters his home as chief mourner. “Happy whom none of these befall;” and in such cheer did our hero find himself when, after hurried inquiry, it transpired that “nothing had happened,” that everything was going on as well as could be, and that Mr. M‘Nab was out at the woolshed (No. 3), and had left word that he would be in at sundown.
“So everything has gone on well in my absence,” said Jack to his lieutenant, as they sat placidly smoking after the evening meal. “I began to be a little nervous as I got near home, though why it should be I can’t say.”
“So well,” answered M‘Nab, “that if it were not for the woolshed there would be too little to do. Once a month is often enough to muster the paddocks, and the percentage of loss has been very trifling. The sheep are in tip-top condition. The clip will be good and very clean. I hope we are past our troubles.”
“I hope so too,” echoed Jack. “How many sheep are there in the river paddock?”
“Nine thousand odd. You never saw anything like them for condition.”
“Isn’t there a risk in having them there at this time of year? The river might come down; and Stangrove told me the greater part of that paddock is under water in a big flood.”