The Honourable Walter was at some little trouble to win the good graces of his host; he admired his horses with unaffected enthusiasm, particularly Wallaroo, the beautiful bay entire that had excited Mike’s admiration, reputedly the fastest animal in the colony, and Macdougal’s pride and joy.  He even consented to be educated on the points of cattle, and to absorb useful information in homeopathic doses about the various breeds of sheep; but Mack never at any time seemed grateful to Ryder for his kindly condescension, and the affliction under the influence of which Mack indulged in strange and disconcerting gymnastics with his tongue rendered conversation with him something of an ordeal, even to a man of Ryder’s insensitive character.  Mack’s tongue seemed to become too large for his mouth at times, and then he obtruded it, rolled it first in one cheek and then in the other, chewed it, and finished with an amazing gulp, implying that the troublesome organ was at length effectually disposed of.

’He’s been like that as long as I’ve known him, and I met him first on the Liverpool Plains in New South twenty years ago,’ said Martin Cargill of Longabeena to Ryder.  ‘He seems exactly the same man now as then.’

’Yet these little peculiarities did not make him impossible in the eyes of the fair,’ answered Ryder.  ‘He has a charming wife.’

‘Oh yes but he had heaps of gold.’

‘Enough to gild that dome on his back!’

’And a girl had not many opportunities of picking and choosing in the Bush here ten years ago.’

’Besides, the sex is so compassionate, Mr. Cargill; the ladies love us for our imperfections.’

‘Have you been dearly loved, Mr. Ryder?’ asked an impudent Sydneyside girl of nineteen.

‘No, no!’ laughed Ryder; ‘my opportunities have neglected me terribly!’

Conversation sometimes ran in this vein even at Boobyalla, and when it did Ryder was responsible for much confusion of thought.  Conversation in the main dealt with riding-trips, dancing-parties, the stirring incidents of the goldfields, and that prolific subject in all societies and at all times—­scandal.  Mrs. Macdougal would have been thunderstruck to know that she and her British lion provided the choicest morsels for discussion for some days prior to the breaking up of the party.

The Honourable Walter Ryder had been a great social success; he had introduced an absolutely foreign element into the Bush party.  His pose of the cynical, dashing, amiable aristocrat, with a cheerful contempt for all aristocratic pretensions, was admirably sustained.  His ready good-fellowship pleased the men; his good looks, his facility in adopting a deep interest in his companion for the moment, and his flow of spirits, delighted the women; and yet it not infrequently happened that his conversation was designed more for his own edification than for the entertainment of his hearers.  It seemed to Lucy Woodrow that the man only half concealed a sort of mephistophelian contempt for the people towards whom he still contrived to maintain a semblance of cordiality.