CHAP: VI. KANGAROO
They went back to Sydney on the Thursday, for two days, to pack up and return to Coo-ee. All the time, they could hear the sea. It seemed strange that they felt the sea so far away, in Sydney. In Sydney itself, there is no sea. It might be Birmingham. Even in Mullimbimby, a queer raw little place, when Somers lifted his head and looked down Main Street and saw, a mile away, the high level of the solid sea, it was almost a shock to him. Half a mile inland, the influence of the sea has disappeared, and the land-sense is so heavy, buried, that it is hard to believe that the dull rumble in the air is the ocean. It sounds like a coal-mine or something.
"You'll let Mr Somers and me have a little chat to ourselves, Mrs Somers, won't you?" said Jack, appearing after tea.
"Willingly. I assure you I don't want to be bothered with your important affairs," said Harriet. None the less she went over rather resentfully to Victoria, turned out of her own house. It wasn't that she wanted to listen. She would really have hated to attend to all their high-and-mighty revolution stuff. She didn't believe in revolutions—they were vieux jeu, out of date.
"Well," said Jack, settling down in a wooden arm-chair and starting his pipe. "You've thought it over, have you?"
"Over and over," laughed Somers.
"I knew you would."
He sucked his pipe and thought for a time.
"I've had a long talk with Kangaroo about you to-day," he said.
"Who's Kangaroo?"
"He's the First," replied Jack slowly. And again there was silence. Somers kept: himself well in hand, and said nothing.
"A lawyer—well up—I knew him in the army, though. He was one of my lieutenants."
Still Somers waited, without speaking.
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