CHAPTER XXII.

A COUNTRY LIFE.

'WELL, old fellow, I shall soon be leaving you.' This was said by Mr Roberts on an evening call upon his Indian friend.

'What's up now with your restless soul?'

'All this,' was the reply. 'I am sick of the restraints of human civilization, and am resolved to cultivate the association of the Magpie, Laughing Jackass, and the Wallaby.'

'And have you not all those close to town?'

'They are about here, but sadly affected by human contact. With my knowledge of real country life, I have more than a suspicion that the Magpie has learned a little extra craft, and is by no means so early a riser as his bush mate. The Laughing Jackass gets low in spirits, and has nothing like the joyous note he rings out in the forest wild. The poor melancholy specimens of the Kangaroo about here are piteous to behold. I suffer the same way. I am getting moody, miserable, and unnatural through hanging about town.'

'Then you must have caught its duplicity, Roberts, as the Magpie had; for everybody takes you to be the most natural and most jolly man about town.'

'That want of perception arises from the chimney smoke.'

'Which,' added the other, 'soon mounts the mountain or drifts down the channel.'

'Or, again, to other observation, climbs up the clouds, or twists itself round the South Pole. But I may attempt some such thing myself, or an equal absurdity, if I don't throw down my grey goose quill, no, that is poetical, but not true,-my rigid, rusty steel pen,-that will do, correct, though not poetical, and take a flight from the busy hum of men.'

'Then you really mean to bury yourself in the bush.'

'To be sure I do. I am only a lone bachelor, and it will cost less than the entombment of wife and a baker's dozen of children.'

'But what can you do on a farm, Roberts, more than I could?'

'I'll tell you. I am longer, thinner, tougher, and stronger than you. I could leap a fence easier with or without a nag. I can hold a plough as well as follow it. I know a beanstalk from a gooseberry bush. I am not too woolly-headed to tell a sheep's tail from calf's-foot jelly. In fact, I was made for a farmer, only they stuck a pen in my hand instead of a reaping hook.'

Captain Douglas had a laugh at the narrative, though expressing his regret at the prospect of parting. He tried to wean the other from his purpose.

'Now, why should you leave such a nice circle of

friends, Roberts? Everybody likes you, you have an easy billet, you are not poor, and you might have about the best girl in the place if you would only settle down a Benedict.'

'As you love me, Hal, pray don't talk such rubbish. You want me to drop down into a gouty, whining old fellow. You want me to rust out my days in easy sloth. And then, to crown all, you would promise me a halter. No-no-old boy. Jack has kept out of that noose so far, and is not to be caught now.'

'But why, my dear friend,' asked Mrs Douglas, 'have you such a prejudice against my sex?'

'Not at all, my dear madam. I am ready this very moment to bargain with Mr Douglas for an exchange into his regiment, quarters and chum included.'

The lady was a little shocked, and blushed, but returned to the charge.

'Don't poke fun, but do tell us why you never married. There might have been an excuse for you in Calcutta, but can be none here with so many pretty Tasmanian girls.'

'Alas! you don't know me, my dear Mrs Douglas. In India the fervour of the sun would never allow Cupid's flame to burn in my heart. It seemed to put it out. Then, too, I was anxious to keep entire, and I saw my married friends reduced to the very moiety of themselves; for half would be flitting to Europe, or turning an angel. To be half in heaven and half on

earth, or half in India and half in London, seemed to me worse than having one leg in the grave.'

'For shame! to talk in that way.'

'Well, there was a real reason. I had always a great horror of being comfortable, and never, as you know, indulged in a hookah or took a siesta. Was I the man to submit to all the enervating, pleasures of matrimony? I should be condemned to ride instead of walking, to sit an hour at table instead of twenty minutes, to eat indigestible things because my wife liked them, to sit out insipid parties, to be droned by my wife's lady friends, to be kept late in bed of a morning, to be worried into excessive propriety, to be my-deared into the sacrifice of private opinion, to become an inert mass of oleaginous indulgence, to be the father of sons who would plague me, and the husband of a wife who might tire of me, if I did not tire of her.'

'Hold! hold! for mercy's sake,' exclaimed the lady. 'You well deserve to be an old bachelor. Go and establish your bachelor's hall in the bush.'

'But where are you going to set up your camp, Roberts?' inquired his old friend.

'I have been halting between three opinions. I have cash enough to buy out a fellow from a thorough good farm in full work, having apples stuck on ready for me, the roosters provided a season in advance, the curry-combed cows accustomed to buttering, the fields without stick or stone, the hop fields laden with

pockets; and I could then sit down with a moral dignity, twirling thumbs in contented ease.'

'Not the worst circumstances of life.'

'That may or may not be, but a vast deal too slow for me. I did fancy I would be lord of a waste, and ride forth each morn to one of the out-station huts some twenty miles from the homestead to inspect a flock, or make inquiries about the lowing herd. It would have a grand sound that of reigning over five hundred thousand acres, although sharing the dominion with black fellows and kangaroos. How it would flourish in a letter, and astonish the Browns! I might not be required to say that I only paid a sort of pepper-corn rent, that I accepted on those easy terms what others had rejected, and that my sheep were mortgaged over their ear marks. To be a lordly squatter was an awful temptation.'

'How could you resist it?'

'By remembering that man was not made to live on mutton alone. I could not relish that charming Queensland, the human melting pot. I never could be a warrior, and so disliked being a target for native spears. I should be wearied to death living where a man rode for a week before getting off a treeless plain. I didn't want the Moreton Bay rot. I didn't want to lose the cash I have saved, nor the life that has stuck to me so long.'

'And now for the third fortune soliciting your acceptance.'