Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/283

 (bursting out laughing). What! upon three hundred and twenty acres of land! Excuse my rudeness in laughing.

(rather nettled). We think it a decent-sized piece of land in England.

. Oh, do you, really? I beg your pardon, but father did all the pioneering work here years and years ago. Fought the blacks when he took up the country, and was speared by them when I was a little girl. So there isn't much pioneering left for you to do, is there ?

. I wish there was.

. Oh, do you? Then why don't you go outside?

. Outside—outside—where's that? I thought I was pretty well outside here; I haven't slept under a roof these two months.

(laughing again). Oh, indeed, I didn't mean that. Of course you're outside now; I wish you were not. I'm afraid you'll get a dreadful cold, the weather is so changeable; but I mean real outside country, beyond the settled districts, in Queensland, Western Australia, Kimberley—anywhere.

. But how far off is that?

. Oh, a couple of thousand miles; but it doesn't matter how far it is; it's the way to make money, and position, and a name. Here no one can do anything but potter about, live miserably, and—and vegetate.

. But I thought everybody farmed in Australia?

. Farmed! farmed! (with amazement}. Why, nobody does; no gentleman farms, I assure you. But English people never seem to understand things for the first year or two.

(with air of astonishment). Oh, then I shall only begin to understand the country in another year? At present I am supposed to be blissfully ignorant of the real meaning of matters Colonial. I may have all my work to undo; is that what you think

. Well, very nearly. It's rude, of course, to say so, but you'd rather be told the truth, wouldn't you? (He bows.) I've heard young Englishmen say over and over again that if they'd done nothing for the first two years they would have learned a great deal and saved all their money.

. But surely there is nothing so hard to understand about the country after all ? Any one can see the sense