The attainment of pure and permanent happiness, by either of the attached persons, has always been held to be a leading aim of true friendship. Mild surprise at the nature of the implements chosen for such attainment is, perhaps, admissible. But no selfish disapproval can be justified for a moment, if only the appreciative partner elects to adhere fixedly to the new plan or newer friend.

Still, human nature is ever more philosophical in theory than in practice; and the wayfaring Damon, de retour, rarely reaches that pinnacle of sublime abnegation which glories in being superseded, or expresses gratitude that Pythias has provided himself with another Damon, ‘whose Christian name was John.’ Some natural distrust must ever be felt, must be exhibited, let the fresher friend be in the highest degree justifiable, heroic, adorable.

All the essayists on friendship notwithstanding, Mr. Neuchamp felt distinctly aggrieved. There was he, rushing back upon the wings of—well—intelligent and sympathetic friendship, willing to resume the delightful Æsthetic intercourse which compulsory absence had alone interrupted, and now, apparently, he needed not to have come at all. Antonia was fully occupied, no doubt interested, by the first frivolous foreigner that came in her way, and was singing duets and so on, as if she had no higher aspiration than to listen for ever to a German band.

Entering the drawing-room, Ernest presented himself just as the Count (of course it was the Count, confound him!) was singing the dich der folgen portion of the melody with, as Ernest thought, ridiculously exaggerated emphasis. He made the most of his eyes—which were really fine—rolled them in an excess of admiration, and throwing the fullest expressive force into the concluding stanza, sighed and bowed low with admiring respect to the fair pianist. She smiled not wholly with displeasure, and as she turned she met the somewhat grave and fixed regard of Ernest Neuchamp.

‘Pray excuse me for disturbing your musical entertainment, Miss Frankston,’ he said, with a coldness unlike anything she had ever observed in his manner before.

Antonia’s colourless face, which had flushed slightly at the suddenness of the contretemps, regained its habitual serene delicacy of hue, as she calmly observed—

‘The Count von SchÄtterheims and I have been practising German duets for a matinÉe that Mrs. Folleton gives next week, and that all Sydney is wild about. It is quite a treat to have the aid of one who understands the genius of the poetry and music so thoroughly. Permit me to introduce you to the Count, Mr. Neuchamp.’

The foreign nobleman, a tall, fair man, with a moustache like a Pandour, bowed graciously, and resumed the musical subject.

‘Ah! I did know Mendelssohn so well as mine fader. He lif at our house when he come to Munich. He always say I was born for a maestro.’

‘And why did you not fulfil his prediction, Count?’ asked Antonia, much interested.

‘De sword,’ said Von SchÄtterheims with a grave, sad air. ‘You vill comprehent, he vas too moosh for de lyre. I join de movement of freedom. I haf commant, wit poor KÖrner. He die in dese arms.’

‘The lyre—ahem!’ said Ernest, smiling grimly at his utterly unjustifiable mot, ‘has reasserted his right, I should say. Did not KÖrner die in 18—?’ (Here he quoted the memorable ‘Sword Song’ in the original.)

‘Ha!’ said the Count, a new expression, not only of satisfaction, pervading his features, ‘thou hast seen the Faderland. No Englander ever learned a so heimlich acsend who drank not in youth the beer at Studenten-Kneipe—we must have BrÜderschaft. Is it not so?’

‘Do you think we can manage “Die Schwalben,” Count?‘ asked Antonia.

‘But I haf bromiss to be at the house of Madame Folleton, to hear mademoiselle bractise dat leedle Folks-lied. Besites, we read Heine togeder. She is aisthetig—yaas—to de tips of her finkers. Adieu!’

‘And now, Mr. Ernest Neuchamp, what have you to say for yourself?’ said Antonia, in a tone between jest and earnest, ‘in that you have been in my presence for half an hour and have only smiled twice, have called me Miss Frankston, and have looked at that delightful creature, the Count, with an air of stern disapproval? Where do you expect to go to?’

‘Really,’ said Ernest, ‘I am unconscious of having done or looked anything peculiarly unsatisfactory. But I thought you were so exceedingly well contented with the Count’s society that I doubted whether I was not making an undesirable third. And who is this Count?’

‘Well, he had letters to papa and old Captain Blockstrop; and all Sydney is wild about him. No party is worth going to where he does not come. He is the most accomplished and charming person—plays, sings, paints, has been a soldier and desperately wounded. All the young ladies of Sydney are wild about him. He is enormously rich, and gives such parties on board his yacht!’

‘And is Miss Frankston one of the young ladies whom this broken-Englished invincible has conquered?’ asked Ernest. ‘May I be permitted to congratulate her?’

‘You must judge for yourself,’ said the girl, with so merry a look and such a genuinely amused expression that Mr. Neuchamp’s slight experience of the ways of womankind assured him that no great damage to his pupil’s heart had as yet taken place. ‘But there is just time for a stroll on the beach before dinner, and a slight sketch of your adventures since you left us. You look quite a bushman now. How sunburned you have managed to get!’

Mr. Neuchamp was but mortal. The best of us, under certain conditions, are weak. As Antonia shut down the piano and ran to get her straw hat with girlish freedom of manner, he felt his justifiable wrath evaporating. Long before they had finished that pleasant ramble in the cool twilight, with the stars one by one appearing, the surge voices whispering low and solemnly kind, the cool briny savour of the ocean—a sea of enchantment to Ernest, but of yesterday from the inner deserts—long before the somewhat emphasised dinner-bell rang, Ernest repented of his pettishness. He knew that his friendship had suffered neither wrong nor change. He felt that there were still feelings and aspirations in that fresh, unspoiled, girlish heart to which he alone had the password. He answered Mr. Frankston’s boisterous hail from the verandah in a surprisingly nautical and cheery manner, and passed into the enjoyment of dinner, and dinner talk, much relieved in mind.

‘What’s become of the Count, Antonia?’ said the old gentleman. ‘Try that Chablis, Ernest, my boy; imported it since you were down. Old Jedwood didn’t give you anything like that; thundering old screw, isn’t he? good man for all that; trust him with your life. I thought you were going to make the Count stay to dinner, Antonia.’

‘Well, it would have been pleasanter for Mr. Neuchamp, perhaps,’ said the young lady demurely. ‘But he said he had to go to Mrs. Folleton’s.’

‘Oh! that was the attraction then,’ said Mr. Frankston. ‘They say he admires Harriet Folleton tremendously. She will have twenty thousand down; but as he is so wealthy himself, of course the cash can’t matter.’

‘You all seem to take it for granted that he is so very rich, and a wonderful fellow in all respects,’ said Ernest. ‘He’s good-looking enough, I admit; but who is to know whether he is really the man he represents himself to be?’

‘Why should he not be himself,’ said Antonia, ‘more than any one else?’

‘For this reason,’ replied Ernest, ‘that it is much more easy for a foreigner to impose upon English people, in a community like this, than for an Englishman to practise a similar deceit. He has but to bring manufactured introductions, and the whole difficulty is over to a man of ordinary address and qualifications for sustaining such a part.’

‘Well, I must say,’ said Mr. Frankston, ‘that the letters I received might have been written by any corresponding clerk in a German counting-house. I took him and his letters for granted, and so did old Blockstrop, just as we should have taken his bills properly endorsed. But let me ask you, Ernest, my boy, doesn’t he look and speak like the real thing?’

‘You must not be offended with me,’ said Ernest, conscious of a certain flash in Antonia’s eyes, ‘or think me ungenerous, if I say that I should like to take a little more time and have some opportunities of intercourse before giving my opinion. You must remember that habitudes of ceremonious behaviour pervade all classes in continental countries to an extent unknown in British communities. By superficial observers a count and a courier, for instance, will not be perceived to differ in manner or language; and the courier is often the more picturesque personage of the two.’

‘And why not?’ inquired Antonia; ‘is there no difference between the manners and the conversation of people of upper and lower rank, except in England and English places?’

‘I do not say that; the contrary is the case, but the discrepancies are sufficiently minute to escape British people not thoroughly acquainted with the language. For the same reason no foreigner would discover the difference between a good-looking, decently-educated Britisher who dropped his aitches, and the real article. Thackeray somewhere gives a case in point.’

‘Well, I suppose we shall be all at the great ball next week,’ said Antonia, ‘and you will then be able to analyse Count von SchÄtterheims to your heart’s content. They say he admires Harriet Folleton extremely.’

‘It’s nothing to me whom he admires,’ said Ernest, ‘as long as he leaves a certain independent-minded young lady friend of mine alone. I should not like to see her carried off by any privateer hoisting false colours.’

‘You are all jealous; that’s the truth, if you would but own it,’ laughed Antonia; ‘and indeed, if one thinks of the commotion the Count has created among the Sydney young ladies, it seems reasonable enough. If he had been a whole man-of-war compressed, he could not have been more flattered and run after. And that is saying a great deal here, you know.’

‘I am aware of that,’ said Ernest, with a slight bow; ‘short as has been my experience, I have noticed so much.’

‘Well, I agree with Ernest to a certain extent,’ said old Paul reflectively. ‘It’s as well to be cautious with these wonderful strangers, especially foreigners. We haven’t quite forgotten Senor Miranda yet, eh, Antonia?’

‘Yes, I did see him once, if that’s what you mean,’ said the girl, looking at Ernest; ‘and I have always been very sorry that he should have come to shame. He was a bad man, of course; but he was really so very grand-looking, and when he spoke he had such a sweet, grave, deep voice that you would have done whatever he asked you at once.’

‘What did he do, then?’ inquired Ernest.

‘Do?’ said Mr. Frankston. ‘Why, with forged letters of introduction he commenced a business transaction with one of the banks; he placed to his credit a large balance, which he took care to draw out; and the end of it was that he walked off with five-and-twenty thousand pounds in exchange for bills not worth that, and has never been seen or heard of since.’

‘How many Germans are there?’ asked Antonia innocently.

‘Forty odd millions,’ answered Ernest.

‘And there are twenty-two millions of Spaniards,’ continued she, ‘for I saw it to-day. Well, that makes so many—sixty millions, or more, altogether. And we are to suspect and distrust all these people just because Senor Miranda was a swindler. I wonder if foreign nations are equally just to Englishmen on their travels.’

‘Come along and let us have our cigars,’ said the old gentleman. ‘Antonia, we must get you made Austrian consul. What—you haven’t learned to smoke in the bush, Ernest? Never mind; come along all the same. Cigars have more flavour in company, and the music will sound better too.’

It was a superb night—one of the units of that wondrous wealth and prodigality of perfect weather by which we should set greater store were we compelled to undergo a quarter of the austerity of northern Europe. Not a cloud was visible. The large and lustrous stars glowed all unheeded by an accustomed world. All the intricacies of the harbour seemed stretched and illumined by the glowing lights from the various vessels outward, homeward bound, or at anchor. And yet all invisible as was the sea, the presence of the majesty of the deep was manifest in the salt savour of the air, in the half-heard murmur of the tide ripples, in the far indistinctly wondrous tones of the surge upon the distant beach.

As the old man lit his cigar and looked seaward, mechanically, the first notes of a brilliant aria floated out upon the air from the piano, and Ernest musingly realised the unostentatious luxury of the household, the exquisite beauty of the scene and surroundings, and contrasted them with the rude adjuncts of Garrandilla and its environs.

Next morning Mr. Windsor made his appearance immediately after breakfast at Morahmee, and awaited commands.

‘What a pretty horse!’ said Antonia; ‘is that yours?’

‘That is Osmund, my first Australian hackney, and a great favourite,’ said Mr. Neuchamp, with a certain pride.

‘Well, you’ve done credit to your knowledge of horseflesh,’ said the old gentleman; ‘he would fetch fifty pounds now in Sydney. And what about my countryman who is on his back? I can tell his parish without twice looking. He’s like the horse, a good-looking, upstanding young one; but we can’t be so sure about his value from appearance only.’

‘Jack Windsor is mine, too,’ said Ernest, ‘a good, clever fellow, I think. It’s rather a long story how we first became acquainted. I’ll tell it you some day. When I buy a run he will go with me as stockman and right-hand man generally.’

‘So that’s the arrangement. I hope he will turn out a credit to you, like the horse. He’s the cut of a good man, and I should have been very glad to have shipped him in old days for a whaling cruise. You will have to exercise your horse, now you have him stabled. Antonia would like a canter, I daresay.’

‘I should, of all things,’ said that young lady. ‘My poor Waratah has not been out for a week; she looks ready to fly over the moon with nervousness. We might go this afternoon, if Mr. Neuchamp can spare the time.’

Mr. Neuchamp declared that all his time was spare time now, and that he should be charmed to be at Antonia’s disposal for any and every afternoon as long as he remained in town.

So Jack and the gray horse were sent back to their stable, with orders to return at three o’clock punctually.

‘And after the ball,’ said Mr. Frankston, ‘I shall take a holiday, so I think we’ll have a sail and do a little fishing. At any rate we shall see the harbour, and I can show you something choice in the way of bays. How do you like the idea?’

Both of the young people protested that it was the exact thing they had been longing for for months. And so, that arrangement being settled, the old gentleman departed for town in his dogcart, and Ernest, having a few things to do bordering upon business, accompanied him.

One of the minor perplexities which assail the student of human nature arises from the fact that all, or nearly all, of the persons who arrive in a colony conduct themselves after the same fashion. For a season, which includes the first few months, they are wildly capricious, and even reckless, in the matter of raiment. The idea is always uppermost that, in a new country, it is not of the slightest consequence how anybody dresses. That to no one, the newly-landed in particular, can it possibly matter whether his fellow-mortals array themselves in broadcloth or sackcloth, tweed or canvas, spotless linen or red shirt.

Another strongly implanted idea is, that the subdivisions of society, set up by colonists among themselves, are vain, weak, and unnecessary. These severely linear distinctions are adhered to in the old country, and are there, doubtless, right and expedient. But, ye gods! in this land, inhabited by the wandering savage but of yesterday, by the confused crowd of hard and anxious colonists (all colonists are necessarily rough and unceremonious), why revive these absurd, exaggerated, old-world ceremonies?

Thus, during his little day of nonage, the emigrant Briton disports himself, rejoicing in his newly-found emancipation from conventionalities. He goes to a dinner party in a morning suit, and finds himself the sole person not in evening dress. He pays visits in a pilot’s jacket, and feels a thrill of pride and defiance as he observes the young ladies of the house look wonderingly at him. He bears himself as he would not dream of doing in his own country town, perhaps a more primitive and deplorably dull neighbourhood than he could easily find in the older districts of Australia. And for all this refusal to pay the simple compliment of conformity to the kindly people among whom he is entertained and made welcome, he has no better reason to give himself or others than that it is a colony, and that it would be absurd to expect the same social observances as in an old country.

Nothing could be more amiable than the general toleration which obtains of this youthful eccentricity, were it not so thoroughly understood that it is the ordinary early phase of griffinhood, and that it is certain to wear out in time. It would be mortifying to the pride of the contemner of social customs, could he but fully understand how every one, from the mild uncritical senior to little miss in her teens, holds these clothes-philosophical eccentricities in good-humoured contempt, and relies upon the wearer becoming like everybody else, in a year or two at farthest.

We know that much of this spirit possessed the aspiring soul of Ernest Neuchamp when first he stood upon the balcony of the Royal Hotel and gazed upon the crowd that passed below. But though he had abated not a jot of some points of his original charter, he yet could not but acknowledge that he was a very different individual, in opinion and in feeling, from the ardent emigrant of only a year ago.

As one consequence of this altered tone of mind, he cheerfully accepted Mr. Frankston’s offer of arranging his admission as honorary member of one of the clubs. He began to feel a longing for the society of his equals; and, as he could not be always lounging away the day at Morahmee, and did not contemplate an immediate return to Garrandilla, he saw the necessity of having some recognised place of temporary abode wherein he might take his ease, in the society of gentlemen, and keep himself au courant with the progress of the world.

This transaction having been formally carried out by the ever-zealous and kindly Paul, he was placed in receipt of a missive, signed by the secretary, and announcing that he had been elected to be an honorary member of the New Holland Club.

He was introduced next day by Mr. Frankston himself, and discovered that he had the entrÉe to a handsome commodious building, with a larger extent of lawn and shrubbery than he had ever seen attached to an institution of the nature before. The internal arrangements were familiar, being precisely the same as those of the London Club, to which he had been elected about five years after nomination.

There were the same grave, decorous servants, the same silent appreciation of the same style of highly respectable cookery, the same comfortable sitting-room, with—oh, pleasant sight!—good store of magazines, Punches, Saturdays, Pall Malls, and all the priceless luxuries of refined, if ephemeral, journalism. There was the same deserted library, the same populous smoking-room, with billiard-room ditto. To a few members old Paul had introduced him, and for the rest he was aware that he must take his chance.

He found, after a day or two, that he had small reason to fear of isolation. A gentlemanlike stranger needs but the evidence of this quality to procure friendly acquaintances, if not intimates, at any club.

He was soon known as ‘a young fellow who had been sent out to old Frankston, and was going to buy a station. A decent sort of fellow belonging to swell people, and so on. Going to do wonders, and make important changes. That will wear off—we’ve all passed through that mill. He’ll settle down and take to wool and tallow kindly, like all the rest of us, in good time.’

Mr. Neuchamp made the discovery that, if he had been less obstinately bent upon separating himself from the presumably prejudiced society of the new land, in the fervour of his philanthropy, he might possibly have met with other colonists, who, like Paul Frankston, would have shielded him from harm, and proffered him good and true advice. In his new home he made the acquaintance of more than one silver-haired pioneer, who, while gently parrying the thrusts of his eager and somewhat communistic theories, quietly put forward the dictates of long experience and successful practice. Every one was disposed to be tolerant, agreeable, even friendly, to the frank youngster, who was, in spite of his crotchets, evidently ‘good form.’ And Ernest realised fully, and rather unexpectedly, that even in a colony it is possible for a stranger to fall among friends, and that colonists are not invariably all stamped out of one pattern, whatever anticipations may be compounded in the fancy of the emigrating critic.

In another respect Ernest found that his club privileges were valuable as well as luxurious. Among the squatters, who composed the larger proportion of the members, he had the advantage of hearing the question of pastoral property discussed with fullest clearness and explanation, in all its bearings. No one evaded giving a decided opinion upon the chances of investment, though, according to temperament, and other causes, the answers were various. All agreed, however, in one respect, namely, that stock had touched a point of depression, below which it seemed wellnigh impossible to fall. The great question, of course, was whether such properties would ever rise, or whether such profits or losses, as the case might be, must be accepted as permanently fixed.

‘I believe that cattle and sheep never will rise a penny higher during our lifetime, particularly cattle,’ said a slight, elegant, cynical squatter, with whom Ernest had made acquaintance. ‘It’s of course nothing but what any one ought to have expected in this infernal country. What is there to keep stock up, I ask? As for wool, South America will grow three bales to our one directly; and cattle and horses will be slaughtered for their hides, as they are there.’

‘What a grumbler you are, Croker!’ said a stout cheery-looking youngster, with a long fair moustache and a smooth face; ‘you run down the country like a rival agent-general. Why do you stay in it, if it’s so bad?’

‘I’d leave to-morrow if I could get any one fool enough to buy my runs; take my passage by the mail and never be heard of here again.’

‘Well, you wouldn’t make a bad immigration agent, if the Government wanted to appoint a prepossessing advertiser for Europe.’

‘Agent! why, what do you see in me to make you think I should accept any such office?’

‘Only, this strikes me, that if you went on talking there in your dissatisfied strain, the acute common people would be certain that you had some reason of your own for dissuading them from embarking, and, so thinking, would pour in by crowds.’

‘Likely enough,’ sneered the avocat pour le diable. ‘There are only two sets of people in this rascally country—rogues and fools.’

‘And to which division of society do I belong, may I ask?’ inquired Ernest, rather amused at the uncompromising nature of the denunciation.

‘Well, perhaps it’s not very polite, but, as you wish for the information, I look upon you as a fool, for wishing to invest and waste your life here; upon Compton as another, because he thinks well of the place and people; and upon myself as the biggest one of the lot for staying here, when I know so well what lies before the whole rotten sham which calls itself a prosperous colony.’

‘Are matters then so bad?’ inquired Ernest, with some solicitude. ‘I thought that the country was sound generally.’

Mr. Croker bestowed upon him a look of pity, mingled with contempt, and in his most acid tones replied—

‘If you knew half as much as I do about the banks and mercantile transactions, if you were a little behind the scenes as I have, perhaps unluckily, been, you would know that a crash must come—must come—within the next two or three years. I expect to see all the banks in the hands of official assignees—they’ll be the only solvent people. As for the merchants——’

‘Well, Mr. Jermyn Croker, “as for the merchants”?‘ said a jolly voice, and Paul Frankston’s rubicund and reassuring countenance appeared in the little group which had gathered to listen to the lamentations of this latter-day seer—‘how about the merchants?’

‘Why,’ returned Mr. Croker, totally unabashed, ‘I expect to see you, and Holder Brothers, and Deloraine and Company, and the rest, begging in the streets.’

‘Ha! ha! ha! capital. Well done, Jermyn; put a half-crown or two in your pocket against that day; I know you’d like to relieve honest poverty. In the meantime come and dine with me on Thursday, will you, and Compton, and Neuchamp? Better come soon, you know, while that Roederer holds out. “Let us eat and drink,” you know, etc. I say, what will you take for that cattle station of yours at Lake Wondah? No use holding, you know, eh?’

‘Two pounds a head, for three thousand—calves given in.’

‘What dates?’

‘Cash down! Do you think I’d take any man’s bills now? No, not if Levison himself were to endorse.’

‘Hem—ha—I learn the cattle are baddish, but the run is understocked. How long will you leave it open?’

‘Oh! a month; three months if you like. Send me a cheque at any time for six thousand and I will send you an order to take possession; that is, as soon as I find the cheque all right.’

‘Ha! ha! not bad, Croker. It would be the first cheque of Paul Frankston’s that ever was unpaid, so far. But you’ll not forget Thursday, all of you, boys. We must try and shake Croker out of the blues, or he’ll ruin the prospects of every squatter in New South Wales.’

Mr. Neuchamp’s spirits were not so permanently affected by the alarming vaticinations of Mr. Jermyn Croker as that he was prevented from exhibiting Osmund’s figure and paces past the club verandah that afternoon, followed by Mr. Windsor on Ben Bolt, on his way to keep tryst with Antonia.

There may be a pleasanter species of locomotion, on a fine day, than that afforded by a good horse in top condition over a smooth road, in the immediate vicinity of a valued lady friend; let us say there may be, but we have yet to discover it. The yacht, sweeping like a seamew over the rippling, gaily-breaking billow, with courses free and a merry company aboard, holds high excitement and joyous freedom from the world’s cankering cares; the mail-phaeton with a pair of well-bred steppers, or, better still, a high drag behind a fresh team, well matched and better-mouthed, has its own peculiar fascination as one is whirled through the summer air, or borne fast and free through the gathering twilight homewards and dinnerwards; even the smooth, irresponsible rush of the express train yields not wholly disagreeable sensation of a victory over time and space, as we whirl down the flying grades and round the somewhat risque curves. But the personal element which the rider shares with the bonny brown, or gallant grey, that strides with joyous elasticity beneath him, had a thrill, in the ‘brave old days of pleasure and pain,’ that dwarfed all other recreation. If anything can intensify the feeling of joyance, it is the presence, similarly equipped, of the possible princess. Then the fairy glamour is complete—in the forest glades are the leaflets hung with diamonds, the half-heard music is full of unearthly cadences—and as the graceful form sways with movement of her eager palfrey, the good knight’s head must be harder than his casque if heart and sword and fame, past, present, and to come, be not laid, then and there, at the feet of that ladye-fayre.

Miss Frankston rode, like most Australian girls, extremely well, and with an unconscious grace and security of seat only to be attained by those who, like her, had enjoyed the fullest opportunities of practice from earliest childhood. Her dark bay mare was thoroughbred, having been carried off by Mr. Frankston five minutes after she lost her first race at Randwick. She had been indifferently brought out, and, as a sporting friend said, was not fit to run for a saddle in a shearers’ sweepstakes.

Antonia had taken a strong fancy to her personal appearance, and Paul, as usual, had then and there gratified his pet. Waratah, which was the filly’s name, proving after trial high-couraged and temperate, had been installed at Morahmee as the description of dumb favourite for which, in the springtime of life, the heart of a woman is prone to crave.

On this particular afternoon it was proposed by Antonia that they should ride to Bondi. ‘One of our show places, you must know,’ she said; ‘and as the wind is coming in strong from the south, we shall have the surf-thunder in perfection.’

‘Don’t ride into the breakers, that’s all, as you tried to do last time we were there; if you and Waratah were carried off your feet, your poor old father would never see his pet again.’

‘How do you know? You silly old papa. Can’t we both swim?’ said the girl, laying her hand tenderly on his weather-beaten cheek; ‘you will make Mr. Neuchamp think that I’m as wild as a hawk, instead of being the sober-minded damsel that I really am. However, you need not be afraid of my running any foolish risks to-day.’

The morning had been clear, with that suspicion of chill which told that at no great distance from the coast there had been a strong change of temperature. In and around Sydney the atmospheric tendency had been softened into a composite of warmth, tempered with freshness wonderful to experience and exhilarating past all description.

The girl slacked the rein of her eager mare, and the excited horses swept along the smooth, winding, dark-red road. Before them lay the dark blue plain of ocean, fading into a misty, troubled haze which met the far horizon. Gradually they increased their distance from the gay gardens and villas of the more populous suburbs, the spires and terraces of the city.

‘This has always been a favourite excursion of mine,’ said Antonia. ‘From the moment we pass Waverley and front the ocean in all his wondrous strength and beauty, I feel as if I could shout for joy. Morahmee is very pretty, but the harbour has always a kind of lakelike prettiness to me; like the beds in a flower garden, while here——’

‘And here?’ said Ernest, smiling, as the southern maiden fixed her earnest gaze upon the wide glory of the unbounded sea, with a passion and tenderness of regard which he had never observed before.

‘Here,’ said she, ‘I feel lifted from my daily small pleasures and very minute cares into a world of thought and vision, exalted, infinite in grandeur and richness of colouring. My mind travels across that region of mystery and wonder which the sea has ever been to adventurous and practical minds, and all my heroes stand visibly presented before me.’

‘Please to introduce me,’ said Ernest.

‘I see Walter Raleigh, courtier, poet, warrior, sailor, statesman, and can mourn over him, as though I had seen that noblest of heads upon the cruel block but yesterday. I see Francis Drake with his crisp curls and dauntless spirit; I see Columbus ever calm, watchful, indomitable; Ponce de Leon, pacing up and down his lonely beach at Hispaniola, and can fancy him setting forth upon his half-melancholy, half-ludicrous expedition to la fontain de jouvences; even Bimini—oh! the many, many friends and companions that have ever been associated with the sea in my mind since my earliest childhood.’

‘I am afraid,’ said Ernest, translating an unacknowledged thought, ‘that you must be something like a cocoa-palm, or your own Norfolk Island pine, unable to exist out of hearing of the sound of the sea.’

‘I never thought about that,’ answered the girl with a half-curious look, as if back from the unreal world. ‘I have always fancied that I would do whatever other people would do. But we all have our pet fancies, which we spoil like children, or which spoil us, and the prosaic part of our life has to go on notwithstanding.’

‘Have you ever seen anything of the bush?’ inquired Ernest.

‘Nothing more than a very hasty visit to one or two of the inland towns. I have always wished to go to a real station and see something of bush life, but papa never could spare me sufficiently long. What is it like? All riding about, from morning to night, and being very sleepy in the evening?’

‘There is a good deal of that,’ said he, ‘but not quite so much as might be thought. There is a great want of books, and of the habit of reading, in many places, though I know of course that it is not universal. But I think when I have a place of my own that I can manage to unite work and play, real exertion with an intellectual alternation, and this should be the perfection of existence.’

‘I don’t see why it could not be managed,’ said Antonia. ‘Many of the young squatters have told me that they could not get books, and that they were becoming frightfully ignorant; but I always said it must be their own fault. Any one who must read will read, no matter what their circumstances are.’

‘So I believe,’ answered Ernest, with most appreciative accents. ‘When young people, or people of any age, say they have not time to read, it sounds in my ears as if they said that they had not time to eat their dinners, or to bathe, or say their prayers, or to talk to their friends. For these duties and other distractions they generally find leisure, and if the time be really fully occupied, a quarter of an hour almost in converse with some authors would provide the mind with new and instructive thoughts for the whole livelong day.’

‘Well, we must see how Mr. Neuchamp carries out his ideas when he has a station of his own,’ said Antonia archly. ‘He must have everything very nice, very superior to the ordinary ways of colonists, and must make money also; that is indispensable.’

‘I will answer for his trying to have things pleasantly and perhaps artistically arranged,’ said Ernest, following out the sketch; ‘but as for the making money, I have so little interest in it as one of the fine arts, that I may fail in that.’

‘But that is the foundation of all the good deeds that you may do, so at least papa says. If a man doesn’t make money, I heard him say once, he shows all the world that there is some quality lacking in him, and any little that he can say or do will not have its just weight; he is regarded only as an unpractical, unsuccessful enthusiast.’

‘I hate the word enthusiast,’ said Mr. Neuchamp, ‘or rather the sense of disparagement in which it is generally used. It has come to mean, a man who is obstinately bent on a course of conduct which is wrong, or who exaggerates the degree or importance of his practice in what is right.’

‘I cannot say that I am particularly fond of the word or of the idea myself, woman as I am; and you know that we are supposed to be full of enthusiasm on every conceivable subject from parasols to politics.’

‘And why does Miss Frankston add her powerful influence to the world’s Philistinism, already sufficient for its needs?’ asked Ernest, with a slight tinge of satire.

‘I don’t say that I deny or distrust enthusiasm in men; and I can imagine a sincere respect and liking for the individual to go with a distrust of the quality, and for this reason. We may have the greatest admiration for this lofty feeling and generous self-denial which go to compose the character of the enthusiast; but we may smile at the likelihood of any of his great schemes issuing in glory and success.’

‘But, surely,’ pleaded Ernest, ‘many of the great deeds which embellish history and which have ennobled our common natures have been nurtured in the brains, wrought out by the hands of men whom the world call enthusiasts.’

‘Of that fact I am not so sure,’ answered Antonia. ‘I should rather say that the successful heroes were men of steadfast nature, not particularly acted upon by joy or despondency, whom success did not exhilarate, nor adversity bow down; through good and evil report, failure, or the harder trial of success, they bore themselves calmly and strongly.’

‘But how about the sea—and the mysterious intoxication communicated by its very appearance?’ asked Ernest mischievously. ‘Is there no enthusiasm about such a feeling?’

‘All those sensations,’ laughed the girl, ‘belong to the ideal Antonia Frankston, of which only a glimpse is permitted to any one from time to time. The real Miss Frankston——’

‘What does she do?’

‘Makes puddings, keeps the household accounts, orders dinner, and has distinct ideas on the subject of the main chance; very prosaic this last. Is not that a lovely nook, and such a pretty house?’

At this turn of the subject, and the turn of the road, they had unexpectedly come upon a villa embosomed in an almost Alpine fir grove; the trim lawns and delicately-coloured parterres, amid which it was placed, giving the whole place the appearance of a Watteau, framed in sombre green.

‘It is a living picture,’ said Ernest; ‘how that wonderful Bougainvillea has draped the whole height of the north wing of the house; it is in full and splendid bloom, and mingled with it are the snowy flowers of the delicate myosotis. How charmingly secluded it is; they can look straight from their parlours across those dwarf-walls—across the Pacific Ocean. But where is the shepherdess?’

‘There she is; do you not see that young girl sitting reading by the fountain? Calm and untroubled she looks; she reclines upon the low terrace facing the sea; by her side is a great vase filled with flowers. A child with a wide sash runs out from the house towards her. Can anything more closely realise a deep dream of peace?’

‘Nothing, indeed,’ assented Ernest admiringly. ‘I could live all my days in such a nook, with one fair spirit to be my minister, and perhaps defer finishing my own and other people’s education indefinitely.’

‘Look!’ continued Antonia, ignoring the personal element, ‘with what a bold, sweeping curve the coastline recedes; leaving the loveliest little landlocked bay, with silver sands and a grand sandstone bluff guarding and walling-in the farther point like a grim jealous giant. But now we have such a piece of road, before we reach Bondi—smooth, soft, and slightly ascending. We must have a gentle breather.’

She took Waratah by the head, and slightly bending forward on her saddle, the eager thoroughbred went away at once, causing the heart of Mr. Neuchamp to palpitate with a nervous dread of accident. Of course Osmund followed suit, though it gave him quite enough to do to keep pace with the bounding, elastic stride of the well-bred flyer. In a three-mile race he could have run Waratah hard. However, for the half-mile spin it took a little hustling to prevent his being distanced. At the steep ascent of the hill above the far-famed beach, Antonia reined in her steed, which possessed the rare compromise, good temper with high courage.

‘I suppose that our stupid scientific men will never find out any way for us to fly,’ said she, ‘but a good gallop must be as near the sensation as we can hope for. What a glorious feeling it is! I envy men their hunting, perhaps more than any of their exclusive pastimes.’

‘But ladies hunt, at any rate in England,’ said Ernest, ‘and very straight they go too.’

‘So they do, I have been told; but in Australia there are hardly enough of us to keep one another countenance; and besides, papa does not like it; the fences are so very dangerous.’

‘All things considered, I agree with Mr. Frankston.’

‘But what a view of views!’

They had now reached the crest of the hill, the deep-toned ceaseless roll of the surf-billows had long been in their ears.

‘That is Bondi,’ said Antonia, pointing southward. ‘I have heard that sound at intervals all my life. I used to dream of it when I was a little child.’

Ernest looked southward over a rolling, rugged down, flecked with patches of low underwood and heath, to where a broad, milk-white beach received the vast rollers of a boundless ocean. No point or headland broke the continuous distance of the immense dark blue plain which stretched to the utmost boundary of vision.

It was no day of gale or tempest, but there had been sufficient wind on this and the previous day to set in motion the unresting surges which failed not the year through to moan and thunder upon this broad clear shining beach. Great crags lay to the westward, shutting off this bay from the other portions of the coast, while a projection to the eastward tended to isolate the bay of surges. Far out, from time to time a shining sail came from the under-world and swept placidly towards the city, or a stately ocean steamer, with throbbing screw or mighty paddle, left a long line of smoke trailing behind her as she drove haughtily against wind or tide on her appointed course.

‘How one drinks in all this grandeur and loveliness of Dame Nature,’ said Ernest. ‘An instinctive constitutional craving seems satiated only by gazing at a scene like this.’

‘I fully comprehend the condition of mind,’ said Antonia. ‘You have been shut up at Garrandilla, where in time, except from information, you would begin to doubt the existence of the sea altogether.’

‘It is an astonishing contrast,’ assented Mr. Neuchamp. ‘How awfully hot it must be there now. I daresay old Doubletides is just coming in, half melted after his day’s work, looking for lost sheep—counting one flock, and ordering another to come in to-morrow.’

‘Surely it must be a terrible life,’ said Antonia apprehensively. ‘Is that why people in the bush go mad sometimes?’

‘It’s hard to say. I really don’t think he or Jedwood are even dull or distrait, or unduly impressed with the nothingness of existence. I think very energetic people have certain advantages. Their tuglike, unremitting habit of doing something keeps the machine going, until some fine day a cogwheel catches, or a rivet breaks, and one more human unit mingles its dust with the forgotten millions.’

‘Contemplation is very nice,’ said Antonia, ‘but I think it tends to lower the spirits, whereas work of any kind, with or without a purpose, tends to raise them; and now we must ride for it, or we shall be late for dinner, which I know from experience does not tend to raise papa’s spirits.’

The roads were perfect, and the kindly twilight as they swept past the line plantations of Randwick, and adown the noble avenue which in the future will be one of the glories of Sydney, through the wide half-redeemed expanse of Moore Park, and so home by Woollahra, gave them every opportunity of lengthening their tÊte-À-tÊte, and yet arriving at Morahmee in time for dinner. It necessitated a hasty toilet on both sides, but at the last notes of the bell Antonia appeared, looking very fresh and animated after the expedition, and Ernest, whose appetite had not yet relapsed into metropolitan apathy, looked forward to dinner with feelings of almost youthful anticipation.

‘Well, what do you think of Bondi?’ asked the old gentleman. ‘I was nearly drowned there when I was a youngster swimming in the surf. In fact I was drowned to all intents and purposes, except that I am here now. I was sucked back by the undertow time after time, till I was quite beaten. I had a few minutes’ awful struggle; then collapse and half a minute’s choke; then lovely music in my ears; and I left the world—as I thought—for good.’

‘You dear old naughty boy of a father,’ said Antonia, with tears half gathering to her eye, ‘I am sure you were bathing unlawfully, like the boys in the story-book. But what restored you to life?’

‘Well, a Maori, who happened to come up at the time in a fishing-boat. He could swim.’

‘But I thought you said that you were swimming in the surf and did your best to fight through it?’ inquired Ernest.

‘Maoris and Kanakas can swim’, repeated the old man sarcastically. ’White men like you and me can only paddle. Anyhow, he dived and brought me up, and ten minutes after I was suffering the frightful torture, “coming to.” So, as perhaps you may have guessed, I did not die that time.’

quoted Ernest. ‘I daresay you have had all sorts of hairbreadth escapes, if you would only tell them to us.’

‘Escapes! well, I have had a few,’ chuckled the old man. ‘Some day I must make Antonia write them out, and we’ll publish the Surprising Adventures of Paul Frankston. I wonder if I could put in some of my stories? Ha! ha! ha! How they would laugh.’

‘I think your life would make a capital book,’ said Antonia, ‘and you could afford to leave the stories out.’

‘Ha! well, I don’t know; some people might object; but I have seen some queer places and people, and had some very narrow squeaks. I was a ship boy in the Lloyd when the Maoris took her at the Bay of Islands.’

‘What did they do?’ asked Ernest.

‘Do? Only murdered every living soul except a little girl and myself! Old Parson Ramsden came down months after and ransomed us. He could go anywhere. That little girl is a grandmother now. I could show you such a splendid bit of tattooing just—Antonia, my dear, you needn’t be afraid.’

‘Don’t be foolish, papa,’ said Antonia, blushing. ‘Mr. Neuchamp, he is only joking.’

‘Joking,’ said the old man; ‘if you’d only had those patterns printed out slowly and indelibly, like me and Mrs. Lutton, poor thing, you’d have known it was no joke.’

‘Well, they didn’t eat you that time, at any rate,’ said Ernest, coming to the rescue; ‘a hero can’t be killed in the first volume; and what was the next narrow escape?’

‘Years afterwards I was cast away in the south seas, and came ashore on a spar at an island where they’d never heard of a white man. They had sacrifices and prayers and made a kind of lottery about whether they should eat me; when, as luck would have it, the chief had lost his eldest son a year before, and the priests said I was him come back. So I was turned into a Kanaka Prince of Wales.’

‘And was the rank properly kept up?’

‘Jolliest place I ever was in, before or since; I had been starved and shipwrecked, and I tell you it was a pleasant change; I was the second man in the island. I had a palace, partly leaves, but cool and pleasant. I had thirty—well—hum—ha—more attendants than I knew what to do with. I cried, I know, when a Yankee whaler took me off six months after. But come, this won’t do, Master Ernest, you mustn’t keep me spinning sea-yarns all night about myself. You haven’t half told us about your doings. Was Captain Jinks really a pleasant sort of fellow? And how about the lock-up?’

‘Come, papa,’ said Antonia, ‘it’s hardly fair to Mr. Neuchamp to laugh at him about that little mistake—any one might be taken in by a nice-looking, clever, plausible man.’

‘Well, I confess,’ said Ernest boldly, ‘I was taken in, though I ought to have known better. If I had seen a seedy aristocrat in my own country, I should not have made a travelling companion of him. But he was very clever and good-looking, and I thought there was nothing wonderful in such a man being out of luck in a colony.’

‘Never mind; fault on the right side,’ said Mr. Frankston—‘anything’s better than being suspicious; you’ll cut your wisdom teeth before you’ve done with us.’

END OF VOL. I

Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh.