Part 51 (1/2)

”What, going a courting, eh? Well, I'll make that all right for you.

Who is the lady,--eh?”

”Why, its Elsy Macdonald, I believe.”

”Elsy Macdonald!” said Sam.

”Ay, yes, sir. I know what you mean, but she ain't like her sister; and that was more Mr. Charles Hawker's fault than her own. No; Elsy is good enough for me, and I'm not very badly off, and begin to fancy I would like some better sort of welcome in the evening than what a cranky old brute of a hutkeeper can give me. So I think I shall bring her home.”

”I wish you well, Matt,” said Sam; ”I hope you are not going to leave us though.”

”No fear, sir; Major Buckley is too good a master for that!”

”Well, I'll get the hut coopered up a bit for you, and you shall be as comfortable as circ.u.mstances will permit. Good morning.”

”Good morning, sir; I hope I may see you happily married yourself some of these days.”

Sam laughed, ”that would be a fine joke,” he thought, ”but why shouldn't it be, eh? I suppose it must come some time or another. I shall begin to look out; I don't expect I shall be very easily suited.

Heigh ho!”

I expect, however, Mr. Sam, that you are just in the state of mind to fall headlong in love with the first girl you meet with a nose on her face; let us hope, therefore, that she may be eligible.

But here is home again, and here is the father standing majestic and broad in the verandah, and the mother with her arm round his neck, both waiting to give him a hearty morning's welcome. And there is Doctor Mulhaus kneeling in spectacles before his new Grevillea Victoria, the first bud of which is just bursting into life; and the dogs catch sight of him and dash forward, barking joyfully; and as the ready groom takes his horse, and the fat housekeeper looks out all smiles, and retreats to send in breakfast, Sam thinks to himself, that he could not leave his home and people, not for the best wife in broad Australia; but then you see, he knew no better.

”What makes my boy look so happy this morning?” asked his mother. ”Has the bay mare foaled, or have you negotiated James Brentwood's young dog? Tell us, that we may partic.i.p.ate.”

”None of these things have happened, mother; but I feel in rather a holiday humour, and I'm thinking of going down to Garoopna this morning, and spending a day or two with Jim.”

”I will throw a shoe after you for luck,” said his mother. ”See, the Doctor is calling you.”

Sam went to the Doctor, who was intent on his flower. ”Look here, my boy; here is something new: the handsomest of the Grevilleas, as I live. It has opened since I was here.”

”Ah!” said Sam, ”this is the one that came from the Quartz Ranges, last year; is it not? It has not flowered with you before.”

”If Linnaeus wept and prayed over the first piece of English furze which he saw,” said the Doctor, ”what everlasting smelling-bottle hysterics he would have gone into in this country! I don't sympathise with his tears much, though, myself; though a new flower is a source of the greatest pleasure to me.”

”And so you are going to Garoopna, Sam?” said his father, at breakfast.

”Have you heard, my dear, when the young lady is to come home?”

”Next month, I understand, my dear,” said Mrs. Buckley. ”When she does come I shall go over and make her a visit.”

”What is her name, by-the-bye?” asked the Doctor.

”Alice!”

So, behold Sam starting for his visit. The very Brummel of bush-dandies. Hunt might have made his well-fitting cord breeches, Hoby might have made those black top-boots, and Chifney might have worn them before royalty, and not been shamed. It is too hot for coat or waistcoat; so he wears his snow-white s.h.i.+rt, topped by a blue ”bird's-eye-handkerchief,” and keeps his coat in his valise, to be used as occasion shall require. His costume is completed with a cabbage-tree hat, neither too new nor too old; light, shady, well ventilated, and three pounds ten, the production, after months of labour, of a private in her Majesty's Fortieth Regiment of Foot: not with long streaming ribands down his back, like a Pitt Street bully, but with short and modest ones, as became a gentleman,--altogether as fine a looking young fellow, as well dressed, and as well mounted too, as you will find on the country side.

Let me say a word about his horse, too; horse Widderin. None ever knew what that horse had cost Sam. The Major even had a delicacy about asking. I can only discover by inquiry that, at one time, about a year before this, there came to the Major's a traveller, an Irishman by nation, who bored them all by talking about a certain ”Highflyer” colt, which had been dropped to a happy proprietor by his mare ”Larkspur,”

among the Shoalhaven gullies; described by him as a colt the like of which was never seen before; as indeed he should be, for his sire Highflyer, as all the world knows, was bought up by a great Hunter-river horse-breeder from the Duke of C----; while his dam, Larkspur, had for grandsire the great Bombsh.e.l.l himself. What more would you have than that, unless you would like to drive Veno in your dog-cart? However, it so happened that, soon after the Irishman's visit, Sam went away on a journey, and came back riding a new horse; which when the Major saw, he whistled, but discreetly said nothing. A very large colt it was, with a neck like a rainbow, set into a splendid shoulder, and a marvellous way of throwing his legs out;--very dark chestnut in colour, almost black, with longish ears, and an eye so full, honest, and impudent, that it made you laugh in his face.

Widderin, Sam said, was his name, price and history being suppressed; called after Mount Widderin, to the northward there, whose loftiest sublime summit bends over like a horse's neck, with two peaked crags for ears. And the Major comes somehow to connect this horse with the Highflyer colt mentioned by our Irish friend, and observes that Sam takes to wearing his old clothes for a twelvemonth, and never seems to have any ready money. We shall see some day whether or no this horse will carry Sam ten miles, if required, on such direful emergency, too, as falls to the lot of few men. However, this is all to come. Now in holiday clothes and in holiday mind, the two n.o.ble animals cross the paddock, and so down by the fence towards the river; towards the old gravel ford you may remember years ago. Here is the old flood, spouting and streaming as of yore, through the basalt pillars. There stand the three fern trees, too, above the dark scrub on the island. Now up the rock bank, and away across the breezy plains due North.