Harry Heathcote of Gangoil | Page 3

"old fellow, you sha'n't be a squatter."
"Why not, Harry?" asked his wife.
"Because I don't want him to break his heart every day of his life."
"Are you always breaking yours? I thought your heart was pretty well
hardened now."
"When a man talks of his heart, you and Kate are thinking of loves and
doves, of course."

"I wasn't thinking of loves and doves, Harry," said Kate." I was
thinking how very hot it must have been to-day. We could only bear it
in the veranda by keeping the blinds always wet. I don't wonder that
you were troubled."
"That comes from heaven or Providence, or from something that one
knows to be unassailable, and therefore one can put up with it. Even if
one gets a sun-stroke one does not complain. The sun has a right to be
there, and is no interloper, like a free-selector. I can't understand why
free-selectors and mosquitoes should have been introduced into the
arrangements of the world."
"I s'pose the poor must live somewheres, and 'squiters too," said Mrs.
Growler, the old maid-servant, as she put a boiled leg of mutton on the
table. "Now, Mr. Harry, if you're hungered, there's something for you
to eat in spite of the free-selectors."
"Mrs. Growler," said the master, "excuse me for saying that you jump
to conclusions."
"My jumping is pretty well-nigh done," said the old woman.
"By no means. I find that old people can jump quite as briskly as young.
You have rebuked me under the impression that I was grudging
something to the poor. Let me explain to you that a free-selector may
be, and very often is, a rich man. He whom I had in my mind is not a
poor man. though I won't swear but what he will be before a year is
over."
"I know who you mean, Mr. Harry; you mean the Medlicots. A very
nice gentleman is Mr. Medlicot, and a very nice old lady is Mrs.
Medlicot. And a deal of good they're going to do, by all accounts."
"Now, Mrs. Growler, that will do," said the wife.
The dinner consisted of a boiled leg of mutton, a large piece of roast
beef, potatoes, onions, and an immense pot of tea. No glasses were
even put upon the table. The two ladies had dressed for dinner, and

were bright and pretty as they would have been in a country house at
home; but Harry Heathcote had sat down just as he had entered the
room.
"I know you are tired to death," said his wife, "when I see you eat your
dinner like that."
"It isn't being tired, Mary; I'm not particularly tired. But I must be off
again in about an hour."
"Out again to-night?"
"Yes, indeed."
"On horseback?"
"How else? Old Bates and Mickey are in their saddles still. I don't want
to have my fences burned as soon as they're put up. It's a ticklish thing
to think that a spark of fire any where about the place might ruin me,
and to know at the same time that every man about the run and every
swagsman that passes along have matches in their pocket. There isn't a
pipe lighted on Gangoil this time of the year that mightn't make a
beggar of you and me. That's another reason why I wouldn't have the
young un a squatter."
"--I declare I think that squatters have more trouble than any people in
the world," said Kate Daly.
"--Free-selectors have their own troubles too, Kate," said he.
It must be explained as we go on that Heathcote felt that he had
received a great and peculiar grievance from the hands of one Medlicot,
a stranger who had lately settled near him, and that this last remark
referred to a somewhat favorable opinion which had been expressed
about this stranger by the two ladies. It was a little unfair, as having
been addressed specially to Kate, intending as it did to imply that Kate
had better consider the matter well before she allowed her opinion of
the stranger to become dangerously favorable; for in truth she had said

no more than her sister.
"The Medlicots' troubles will never trouble me, Harry," she said.
"I hope not, Kate; nor mine either more than we can help."
"But they do," said Mary. "They trouble me, and her too, very much."
"A man's back should be broad enough to bear all that for himself,"
said Harry. "I get ashamed of myself when I grumble, and yet one
seems to be surly if one doesn't say what one's thinking."
"I hope you'll always tell me what you're thinking, dear."
"Well, I suppose I shall--till this fellow is old enough to be talked to,
and to be made to bear the