Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/512

 and general embellishment that they will do more than pass muster among their European kinsfolk. Bob will graduate at Oxford or Cambridge, and if ever he revisits Australia—as being a younger brother he probably will—it will be impossible to tell him, at first sight, from the imported Anglo-Saxon aristocrat.

And Hugh Tressider, what of him? As he smokes his pipe that evening by the camp-fire—one of the last of the series he is likely to warm himself by—what avenues of enjoyment, hitherto undreamed of, seem lengthening out into vast and endless grandeur, like the Sphinx-guarded paths of Egyptian cities, all ending in wondrous palaces, purple-draped and gold-illumined! The hard and homely present nearly faded out of sight; only by an effort could he recall himself to the rude primeval surroundings he was so soon to quit for ever. A peer of England! A man of fortune! The heir of an ancient name! Free to meet and mingle with the world's best and fairest, bravest and most exalted, on terms of freedom and equality. His foot slipped into a pool of ice-cold water amid the tussocks of frosted grass as he thought of all this, and with a light laugh at the incongruity of his situation and prospects, he resumed his walk around the recumbent drove.

At no distant date the Tressider family sailed for England, when doubtless most of the good things in keeping with their altered fortunes were duly dispensed to and appreciated by them.