Young "Cocksure," nephew of a neighbouring squatter, deemed this "all blow," as he publicly termed it, and offered "two to one on Travers' 'Temeraire.'"
True to his word, the host, approaching the young spruce, bid him "Good-bye," and putting arm in his escorted him off the course. None essayed "odds" after that.
"You spoil your sport, as you do your work, in town," explained the doctor to some friends. "We are going to have both pure and simple here. English folk take pleasures sadly, their labour moodily, owing partly to the greed that—in some form of gambling or exploiting— finds its way to every social sphere. I'll have none of it here. What say you. Brown?"
"That I am going to win the 'Wattle Blossom'—the prize of the day," was the reply. Arrayed in red flannelette and white pants, the village parson was leading his light-limbed steed by the rein, flung carelessly over his arm.
"Looks well, but not very dignified, in that get-up," objected the mining manager of the "Golden Stream," who held forth at the chapel on Sundays.
"Dash dignity!" retorted the doctor, energetically. "Your churches are dying of it—or were doing so, until such as my friend Brown arose. Because he identifies himself with the lawful pursuits' and pastimes of his people, in no namby-pamby, patronizing way; because he lives their life right down amongst them—and a higher one all the while, never forgetting it, though he does not always speak of it—he holds these people by the heart-strings. Brimful of life—animal spirits, intellectual force and spiritual life, as you call it—he is, literally, the father of his flock."
"I won't have this, Tom," Frank Brown was say-
