An Outback Marriage | Page 4

lapsed into reveries, out of which he would come with

a start and break in on other people's conversation, talking them down
with a serene indifference to their feelings.
"Come out to old man Grant, have you?" he drawled to Carew, when
the ceremonies of introduction were over. "Well, I can do something
better for you than that. I want a mate for my next trip, and a rough
lonely hot trip it'll be. But don't you make any mistake. The roughest
and hottest I can show you will be child's play to having anything to do
with Grant. You come with me."
"Hadn't I better see Mr. Grant first?"
"No, he won't care. The old man doesn't take much notice of new
chums--he gets them out by the bushel. He might meet a man at dinner
in England and the man might say, "Grant, you've got some stations.
I've got a young fellow that's no use at home--or anywhere else for that
matter--can't you oblige me, and take him and keep him out of mischief
for a while?" And if the old man had had about a bottle of champagne,
he'd say, "Yes, I'll take him--for a premium," or if he'd had two bottles,
he'd say, "Send along your new chum--I'll make a man of him or break
his neck." And perhaps in the next steamer out the fellow comes, and
Grant just passes him on to me. Never looks at him, as likely as not.
Don't you bother your head about Grant--you come with me."
As he drawled out his last sentence, a move was made to dinner; so the
Englishman was spared the pain of making any comments on his own
unimportance in Mr. Grant's eyes, and they trooped into the
dining-room in silence.
CHAPTER II.
A DINNER FOR FIVE.

A club dining-room in Australia is much like one in any other part of
the world. Even at the Antipodes--though the seasons are reversed, and
the foxes have wings--we still shun the club bore, and let him have a

table to himself; the head waiter usually looks a more important
personage than any of the members or guests; and men may be seen
giving each other dinners from much the same ignoble motives as those
which actuate their fellows elsewhere. In the Cassowary Club, on the
night of which we tell, the Bo'sun was giving his dinner of necessity to
honour the draft of hospitality drawn on him by Grant. At the next table
a young solicitor was entertaining his one wealthy client; near by a
band of haggard University professors were dining a wandering
scientist, all hair and spectacles--both guest and hosts drinking mineral
waters and such horrors; while beyond them a lot of racing men were
swilling champagne and eating and talking as heartily as so many
navvies. A few squatters, down from their stations, had fore-gathered at
the centre table, where each was trying to make out that he had had less
rain than the others. The Bo'sun and his guests were taken in hand by
the head waiter, who formerly had been at a London Club, and was
laying himself out to do his best; he had seen that Gillespie had
"Wanderers' Club" on his cards, and he knew, and thanked his stars that
he did know, what "Wanderers' Club" on a man's card meant. His
fellow-waiters, to whom he usually referred as "a lot of savages," were
unfortunately in ignorance of the social distinction implied by
membership of such a club.
For a time there was nothing but the usual commonplace talk, while the
soup and fish were disposed of; when they reached the champagne and
the entrées, things become more homelike and conversation flowed. A
bushman, especially when primed with champagne, is always ready to
give his tongue a run--and when he has two open-mouthed new chums
for audience, as Gordon had, the only difficulty is to stop him before
bed-time; for long silent rides on the plain, and lonely camps at night,
give him a lot of enforced silence that he has to make up for later.
"Where are you from last, Gordon?" said the Bo'sun. "Haven't seen you
in town for a long time."
"I've been hunting wild geese," drawled the man from far back,
screwing up one eye and inspecting a glass of champagne, which he
drank off at a gulp. "That's what I do most of my time now. The old

man--Grant, you know--my boss--he's always hearing of mobs of cattle
for sale, and if I'm down in the south-west the mob is sure to be up in
the far north-east, but it's all one to him. He wires to me to go and
inspect them quick and lively before someone else gets them, and I ride
and drive