The fact is, Bess, I waited as long as I could for you to come over this side to look after me, that I might cease wandering and settle down. As you know, I've tried my hand at a good many occupations, often for the freak of the thing, but always with a reserve force for doing the right thing at last, and somehow I've mostly made bread and cheese and a little more. The gold fever was over long before I reached Australia, but I had a turn at the cradle and pan for all that, and turned up a pretty good "claim"—enough to take me on my travels afterwards. I've been out prospecting; I've had a turn in the great grazing grounds, though I didn't care to sink the little money I had in a fancy flock in the hope of turning it into a herd, or to spend my life on horseback galloping after half-wild cattle on the plains. I wasn't long "beating about the bush," though I've once or twice been out with the natives and have had a brush with the rangers, one of whom—Black Jack—carried a bullet of mine about in his shoulder for some time before he fell in a fight with the police just outside Melbourne. His skeleton's in the museum now; but the worst time I ever had was when I was driving ——; but I'll tell you that another time. I meant when I began this letter to start with an announcement that ought to take your breath away, and somehow I'm as shy of saying it on paper as I should be if you were standing before me with those "clear cold eyes" of yours, that yet were always shining with love to your wild brother, though you always "looked him through." The plain truth is, I now invite you to come over here and live with us. Do you read that?—us. For I am—we are—married. Yes; a fact. And who do you think we are? There's me to begin with, and who's the other party, the "Co.," should you fancy? Well, don't guess. I'll tell you. Mary Deane. You remember how I used to sing:
"I'm sitting on the stile, Ma-ree,"
in the old house at home, when she was a little wisp of a dark-eyed lassie, just thinking about going to the old farm belonging to her Uncle Deane, in Herefordshire; and how she ran away and hid herself when I wanted to say "good-bye" to her before I left. Well, her uncle made up his mind to come to this side—as you wrote me he had—and I'd nearly forgotten all about it, until one day, as I was strolling along towards the bank in Sydney, who should I come upon quite suddenly but Mr. Deane, and walking beside him a slim, elegant, bright-eyed beauty, to whom I raised my hat, not knowing who she was, till a peal of silvery laughter brought back my memory to the days of old, when we used to sit in the garden on a summer evening at Barnes, and slip down the lawn to the boat-house, that we might launch the dear old pater's wherry, and have a moonlight trip, with soft singing of part songs, to which I know I growled a villainous bass. Dear pater, had he lived I might have stayed in the old country, and tried to keep up the old place; but I fear I should have disappointed him, and so—well, all may be for the best.
Perhaps it was the remembrance of the dear balmy evenings "under the Abeles" that put me in mind of proposing a picnic, for it was the winter before last that I met the Deanes, and therefore our midsummer, and a precious hot one too I can tell you, so that all the ripe fruit, bottled beer, champagne, and everything else that was cool and slaking was at a premium.
Mr. Deane was not altogether unacquainted with Sydney. He had been for some time in the colony, and had done a good thing in cattle agency. "I landed a pretty fair commission out of one lot that I had out beyond Gomaree Flats," he said to me, "a wild lot they were too, and I bought them on spec and sold them three weeks after with my own brand upon them."
"You don't mean to say that they were at Goobong station and branded D," said I.
"Just so, have you seen any of 'em?"
"Why I helped brand them," I cried; "I was on the station and rode out after a bull that had gone away. I must have been within a couple of miles of your place if you were at Gomaree; and—was Miss Deane with you?"
"Mary was with me, Tom Grantley," says Mr. Deane, "and I don't think you used to say 'Miss' in the old time when I knew your father."
"No; but then you see Mary wouldn't even come to say 'good-bye,'" I replied; and, as I looked, I saw the girl—she is a lovely girl, Bessie, though she's now Mrs. Grantley—blush like a rose, and actually, I think, a tear stood in her eye, though she laughed again when putting her hand in mine. She said, "Forgive me, Tom; for if you and uncle are to continue friends, I must be friendly with you too; so I make the first overture of reconciliation."