Page:The New Arcadia (Tucker).djvu/265

Rh L'homme qui rit of the township, who stands talking to the bank-clerk, checks for one moment his hilarity as the maiden passes; the half-stupefied tramp, sitting on his swag and leaning against the verandah-post, looks up with admiration, as he grinds his tobacco in revolving palms. The bank-manager is crossing the road with the twentieth client to commemorate at Tom Coke's bar, account-squaring results of a fruitful harvest.

"Deuced fine girl!" he exclaims, as the frightened thing hurries past. The bank-clerk—with handsome face and open heart, who might be a man of worth to-day, if the wealthy institution he served had bestowed one thought on the pitiable lot of such as he—follows the girl to the platform. The appearance of such a girl in Gumford was an unwonted experience. With the absence of ceremony acquired in the country, the youth, curious and admiring, asks can he "do anything for her?" The round man who ever laughs is rolling, with hands in pocket, across the desert of dust to see "this pretty piece of goods."

"No train for two hours," the lounging station-master reports.

Here, to be gazed at and questioned by half-intoxicated natives, Gwyneth cannot stay. She remembers the St. Clouds at the store opposite, whose pretty daughters had been delighted with her retreat at Mimosa Vale, and had repeatedly asked her to spend a few days at Gumford.

Smiling, good-natured St. Cloud almost leaps the heaped-up counter, when he sees the anxious-looking maiden threading her way amongst bags and tins and cases that range about the floor.

The wanderer is taken by storm; begged to remain in the cosy, domestic addendum to the busy store. The girls