The sun climbing round the base of Conical Hill at daybreak next morning, found Selwyn already abroad, and in the very best of humours. The gentle trickle of last night's nightcap down his gullet had warmed the very cockles of his heart, so he told a mud-lark discussing an early worm among the saplings. He was outside before the day was properly alight, standing on the front verandah, hands deep in pockets, legs set apart, sniffing the remnants of a night breeze, which had not yet fled the sun's wooing. Finding his spirits insisted upon more active affairs and discovering no prospect of breakfast for a while, he picked up his stick, which he only exchanged for gun or fishing-rod, and took a turn round the back premises, where there might be matters to occupy a fellow until people thought fit to give up slugging in bed. Rheumy-eyed Scabbyback, rising morosely from a sack, was prodded good morning, and Gripper was accorded even more gracious welcome, being unchained and allowed to follow on the march of discovery.
Selwyn called out good morning to old Neville, as he passed towards the mine on early business, and presently seduced into talk Mrs. Nankervis as she bustled in and out of the back door on the work of breakfast. He presided at a difference of opinion between Gripper and a blue billygoat with the beard of the Prophet, which ruled the tattered herds of Surprise. He had just come to an end of everything, including his good humour, when news arrived that breakfast waited.
Mrs. Selwyn and Maud were already in the dining-room. Hands came out of his pockets. "By Jove!" he said. "Good morning. Here you are at last. It is wonderful how people like to loaf in bed."
"It is the only morning you have been down first for a week," Mrs. Selwyn answered sharply.
"What about 'a man's work may be early begun; but a woman's work is never done,' Mr. Selwyn?" Maud said.
Selwyn changed the conversation. He put on his most genial smile. "Your father out again to-day? I suppose he won't be back yet? Am I to preside again, Miss Neville?"
"If you won't mind. Shall we sit down?"
Maud took her place at one end of the table and poured out tea. Selwyn, with a good deal of noise, pulled up a chair at the other end and began to lift dish covers. Mrs. Selwyn found her seat half-way down and prepared to be as gracious as possible, in spite of feeling most unequal to the task. What she endured daily at this ghastly place, nobody could possibly comprehend. And she had foreseen it all so clearly with that capable brain of hers! Never again should Hilton overrule her.
A first inspection of dishes revealed, besides a noble ham, procured from the coast in honour of visitors, eggs, a wallaby stew, and lastly—red, rich, and done absolutely to the last turn—a thick piece of rump steak, beyond any doubt the best bit Selwyn had ever seen since leaving the South. Quietly the cover went down upon that dish.