An Outback Marriage | Page 4

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 entr��es, 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 and coach hundreds of miles to get at some flat-sided pike-horned mob of brutes without enough fat on them to oil a man's hair with. I've to go right away out back now and take over a place that the old man advanced some money on. He was fool enough, or someone was fool enough for him, to advance five thousand pounds on a block of new country with