"Rather early in the evening for Queensland stories, isn't it?" replied the younger man thus invoked, who did not, except in a deeper tint of bronze, present any point of departure from the home-grown product. "Tell him one or two after dinner. I'd rather have his advice about the country sport, if he'll be good enough to enlighten me."
"A better guide than my old friend the rector here the country doesn't hold," said the ex-squire. "He knows to a day when 'cock' may be expected, and though he doesn't hunt now, he used to be in the first flight; as for fishing, he's Izaak Walton's sworn disciple. I leave you in good hands. All the same, I'm ready to be of use in any way."
"The weather feels warm now, even to us. We hardly expected such a day," remarked Mrs. Lexington; "and as we have none of us been home before, we don't quite know what to make of it."
"If it's a trifle warm and close, it never lasts more than a few days, they tell me," said the eldest daughter; "and the nights are always cool. That's one comfort. I always feel like putting a new line in my prayers of thankfulness for there being hardly any flies and no mosquitoes. And such lovely fresh mornings to wake up in! Such trees, such grass! No wonder the hymns speak of 'a happy English child!'"
"All the same, Australia is not a bad country," said Mrs. Lexington, "though we did have seventeen days once at the Macquarie River when it was a hundred in the shade every day and ninety every night. On the other hand, the Riverina winter was superb—such cloudless days and merely bracing mornings and evenings. I dare say we shall miss them here in 'chill October.' Sir Roland will give us his impressions when he returns, perhaps," she continued. "It is hard to find a climate which is pleasant all the year round. A cool summer is enjoyed at the expense of a cold winter. And we have extremes even in Australia. I saw in the paper lately some account of pedestrians being thirty hours in snow, and much exhausted when they reached their destination after being out all night."
"I should hardly have thought that possible," said the guest, genuinely astonished.
"English people hear more of the heat of our climate than the cold," said his host, good-humouredly; "but the mails are carried on snow-shoes in the winter season of a town I know, and I have seen the children going to school in them too."
"Oh, come! dad will soon begin to tell stories about snakes," said Miss Violet, "if we don't turn the conversation. Do you have much lawn tennis in the neighbourhood, Sir Roland?"
"A good deal," he replied, "as the rector will tell you. His daughters are great performers, and at the last tournament with West Essex Miss Charlton was the champion."