Robbery Under Arms - Rolf Boldrewood (most important books of all time .TXT) 📗

where they never fattened, for £1 a head or less, and send them away to his runs in the Lachlan. In six months you wouldn’t know ’em. They’d come down well-grown fat cattle in a year or two, and be worth their £6 or £8 a head.

The same way with land; he bought up all the little bits of allotments with cottages on them round Paramatta and Windsor way and Campbelltown⁠—all them old-fashioned sleepy old places near Sydney, for cash, and cheap enough. The people that had them, and had lived a pokey life in them for many a year, wanted the money to go to the diggings with, and quite right too. Still, and all this land was rising in value, and George’s children, if he had any, would be among the richest people in the colony.

After he’d married Miss Oldham⁠—they were Hawkesbury people, her grandfather, old Captain Oldham, was one of the officers in the first regiment that came out⁠—he didn’t see why he shouldn’t have as good a house as anyone else. So he had a gentleman up from Sydney that drew plans, and he had a real stone house built, with rooms upstairs, and furniture to match, a new garden, and a glass house at the side, for all the world like some of them grand places in Darling Point, near Sydney.

Aileen wouldn’t go in, and you may be sure I didn’t want to, but we rode all round the place, a little way off, and had a real good look at everything. There wasn’t a gentleman in the country had better outbuildings of all sorts. It was a real tip-top place, good enough for the Governor himself if he came to live up the country. All the old fencing had been knocked down, and new railings and everything put up. Some of the scraggy trees had been cleared away, and all the dead wood burned. I never thought the old place could have showed out the way it did. But money can do a lot. It ain’t everything in this world. But there’s precious little it won’t get you, and things must be very bad it won’t mend. A man must have very little sense if he don’t see as he gets older that character and money are the two things he’s got to be carefullest of in this world. If he’s not particular to a shade about either or both of ’em, he’ll find his mistake.

After we’d had a good look round and seen the good well-bred stock in the paddocks, the growing crops all looking first-rate, everything well fed and hearty, showing there was no stint of grub for anything, man or beast, we rode away from the big house entrance and came opposite the slip-rails on the flat that led to the old cottage.

“Wouldn’t you like to go in just for a minute, Dick?” says Aileen.

I knew what she was thinking of.

I was half a mind not, but then something seemed to draw me, and I was off my horse and had the slip-rail down before I knew where I was.

We rode up to the porch just outside the verandah where George’s father had planted the creeping roses; big clusters of bloom they used to have on ’em when I was a boy. He showed ’em to me, I remember, and said what fine climbers they were. Now they were all over the porch, and the verandah, and the roof of the cottage, all among the shingles. But Mrs. Storefield wouldn’t have ’em cut because her old man had planted ’em. She came out to see us.

“Well, Ailie, child,” says she, “come along in, don’t sit there on your horse. Who’s this you’ve got with you? Oh! it’s you, Dick, is it? My eyes ain’t as good as they were. Well, come along in too. You’re on the wrong road, and worse’ll come of it. But come along in, I’m not going to be the one to hunt you. I remember old times when you were a little toddling chap, as bold as a lion, and no one dreamt you’d grow up to be the wild chap you are. Gracey’s inside, I think. She’s as big a fool about ye as ever.”

I very near broke down at this. I could stand hard usage, and send back as good as I got; but this good old woman, that had no call to think anything of me, but that I’d spoiled her daughter’s chance of marrying well and respectably⁠—when she talked to me this way, I came close up to making a fool of myself.

We walked in. Gracey was sewing away in the little parlour, where there always used to be a nosegay when I was a boy, and it was that clean and neat I was afraid to go into it, and never easy till I got out again. There she sat as sober-looking and steady as if she’d been there for five years, and meant to be for five years more. She wasn’t thinking of anybody coming, but when she looked up and saw me her face changed all of a sudden, and she jumped up and dropped her work on the floor.

“Why, whatever brings you here, Dick?” she said. “Don’t you know it’s terribly dangerous? Sir Ferdinand is always about here now. He stayed at George’s new house last night. Wasn’t he at Rocky Flat today?”

“Yes, but he won’t be back for a week. He told Aileen here he wouldn’t.” Here I looked at them both.

“Aileen’s carrying on quite a flirtation with Sir Ferdinand,” says Gracey. “I don’t know what someone else would say if he saw everything.”

“Doesn’t he talk to anyone when he comes here, or make himself pleasant?” I said. “Perhaps there’s more than one in the game.”

“Perhaps there is,” says Gracey; “but he thinks, I believe, that he can get something out of us girls about you and your goings on, and where you plant; and we think we’re