Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/288

 old 'rager' bullock, all by himself in the strangers' yard. But hadn't you better open your letter?

. Then you do take an interest in me? After this I fear nothing. Why will you not consent to trust your future welfare to my guidance?

(scornfully). A likely thing! Trust a free selector! Not if I know it!! ! Why, what would become of us? Perhaps you'd like to see me lifting the top off a camp-oven—on a fire, under that black stump there—whilst you were—chopping—down—a—tree! ha! ha! No! (surveying her well-fitting riding-habit—her thoroughbred horse, and stroking her gloves) I seem to like this sort of thing better. I must drag on for a while with my allowance from poor old dad.

(with lofty resolve). You are heartless, Dulcie—devoid of natural affection. You laugh at my inexperience, you sneer at my poverty—let us part for ever. Go back to your father's mansion and leave me to my fate. I feel that I shall succeed, perhaps make a fortune, in the end.

(Aside—It will be a precious long time first! What a dear, noble fellow he is—I hate to bully him!) Aloud—Come, Cecil (winningly), you mustn't be cross. I am only a poor simple girl brought up in the bush (I wonder what he is then?), but of course I know more about stock and land than you do. If we are not to be married (you see I love you a little) till you make enough to buy the ring out of this calf-paddock of yours, we may wait till we're grey! But why don't you open the letter? It might contain something of importance.

(partly mollified). I'm afraid not; merely an entreaty to return from this wild country, where there are no people fit for me to associate with, where I may starve, or be killed by blacks or wild beasts—that's the general tone of my letters of late. Ha! What is this? (Reads—Your poor Uncle Humphrey died last week; he was on bad terms with our side of the house, and has not spoken to your father for forty years; but he has left you £20,000, for which you will receive a bank-draft by this mail. Of course you will come home at once!) Of course, of course! Oh! eh! Dulcie dear? Now I shall build a house here, plant a garden, make a lakelet, sow artificial grasses, fence and subdivide,—in fact, make a paradise of these desolate, bare acres. Eventually