couraged about the place," said Lord Waveryng. "It's all with a view to ultimate profit in providing copy for my lady."
"I've managed it."' Lord Horace went on triumphantly, "with a considerable expenditure of rum and tobacco—doled out in driblets. If I had given it in a lump, the Tommies, Paris and Menelaus, might have struck a bargain, and the dramatic motif of the corroboree would have been done for. Yesterday there was a little throwing of spears, and the end of it is that the Moongans and the Baròlins have agreed at my suggestion to have a big corroboree and a 'woolla'—that's what they call their Parliamentary Council, Em—the night after to-morrow, and then to go forth and fight the Durundurs. Get your note book ready, Em dear. It's to be a real swagger thing in corroborees."
Lady Waveryng's book was a stock joke. It afforded a pretext for the trotting out of all the oddities available, and gave point to the various expeditions and bush experiences. She insisted upon learning everything that had to do with station routine, and handled saddles as if she had been born in a stockman's hut, and she was learning to crack a stock whip, to plait a dilly-bag, and to make a damper. Lord Waveryng took life less enthusiastically, perhaps because he was a little gouty. Pacing and stud cattle were his hobbies, and he was interested in the Baròlin and Tunimba breeds, and rode about a good deal, admiring the scenery and getting a fair amount of amusement out of the free-selectors and the proprietors of the grog-shanties.
A black boy was despatched to Tunimba, and Mr. and Mrs. Jem Hallett turned up the next day in time for breakfast. The party was a large one, for Blake and Trant were there also, and naturally Frank Hallett, and besides the Waveryngs, Mrs. Allanby and Elsie.
Elsie was strangely subdued, indeed almost melancholy. Do what she would to distract her thoughts—and surely in the attentions of her lover and the discussion of future plans there was enough to distract them—she could not keep them a way from Blake, and the mystery of his life—for she was
