Page:Such Is Life.djvu/301

Rh ordinary language was singularly quotable in character, he digressed into a searching and comprehensive curse, extending, inclusively, from Sir Thomas Elder away back along the vanishing vista of Time to the first man who had conceived the idea of utilising the camel as a beast of burthen.

"So we camped late at night," he resumed, in a relieved tone; "and this friend of yours cleared-off early in the morning. He was n't interested in anything but the Diamantina track, and I was nasty over the gilgie, so we did n't yarn much. However, that chap 's no more off his head than I am. Bit odd, I daresay; but that's nothing. I often find myself a bit odd—negligent, and forgetful, and sort of imbecile—but that's a very different thing from being off your head. Why, just now, I saw your two horses in the paddock as I came up; and, if I was to be lagged for it, I could n't think where I had seen them before—in fact, not till I recognised you. Want of sleep, I blame it on. Well, if I don't shift, there won't be many pickles left for my chaps. They were to boil the billy at the Balahs. Better give us another bottle." He handed Moriarty the money for the goods, and stowed them in a small flour-bag. "So-long, boys—see you again some day." And the imbecile stranger trailed his four-inch spurs from our presence.

"Do you know him, Moriarty?" I asked.

"I can't say I do," replied the storekeeper. "One day, last winter, I happened to be out at the main road when he passed with 400 head of fats; and somehow I knew that his name was Spooner. Never saw him again till now. But how about Nosey Alf—was n't I right for once?—and were n't you wrong for once?"

"So it appears," I replied. "But you haven't told me how you worked the scandal. You were sitting with your backs against the wall—Go on"

"Sitting with our backs against the wall," repeated my agent complacently. "Well, we began to talk about the jealousy there was amongst the station chaps on account of Jack the Shellback being picked to take Nosey's place; and from that we got round to gossip about you stopping with Nosey the evening you left here, and wondering how you got on together, being queer in different ways. Then the conversation settled down on you; and we even quoted a remark Mrs. Beaudesart had made about you, only a couple of hours before. She had said that, though you were such a wonderful talker, you were surprisingly reticent respecting your own former life, and your family connections, and the place you came from. We commented on this remark, and laughed a bit, not at you, but at her. Clever engineering—was n't it?"

"Not unless she was in her room, with her ear against the wall."

"Trust her," replied my ambassador confidently. "She saw us sitting-down as she went across the yard; and we counted on her. We knew her meanness in the matter of listening."

"Don't say 'meanness,'" I remonstrated. "I must take her part there. You can't judge even a high-minded woman by the standard of a moderately mean man, in this particular phase of character. Our deepest