At this juncture a gay personage joined the party.  He had a ball waistcoat, as alarming tie, a shooting jacket, wet muddy trousers and shoes, and an empty basket on his back.

He joined our group, just as George was saying to himself very sadly, “I am in everybody’s way here”—­and he attacked him directly.

“Everybody is in this country.”

The reader is to understand that this Robinson was last from California; and California had made such an impression upon him, that he turned the conversation that way oftener than a well-regulated understanding recurs to any one topic, except, perhaps, religion.

He was always pestering George to go to California with him, and it must be owned that on this one occasion George had given him a fair handle.

“Come out of it,” continued Robinson, “and make your fortune.”

“You did not make yours there,” said Susan sharply.

“I beg your pardon, miss.  I made it, or how could I have spent it?”

“No doubt,” said William.  “What comes by the wind goes by the water.”

“Alluding to the dust?” inquired the Cockney.

“Gold dust especially,” retorted Susan Merton.

Robinson laughed.  “The ladies are sharp, even in Berkshire,” said he.

Mr. Robinson then proceeded to disabuse their minds about the facility of gold.

“A crop of gold,” said he, “does not come by the wind any more than a crop of corn; it comes by harder digging than your potatoes ever saw, and harder work than you ever did—­oxen and horses perspire for you, Fielding No. 2.”

“Did you ever see a horse or an ox mow an acre of grass or barley?” retorted William dryly.

“Don’t brag,” replied the other; “they’ll eat all you can mow and never say a word about it.”

This repartee was so suited to their rustic idea of wit, that Robinson’s antagonists laughed heartily, except George.

“What is the matter with him?” said Robinson, sotto voce, indicating George.

“Oh! he is cross, never mind him,” replied Susan ostentatiously loud.  George winced, but never spoke back to her.

Robinson then proceeded to disabuse the rural mind of the notion that gold is to be got without hard toil, even in California.  He told them how the miners’ shirts were wet through and through in the struggle for gold; he told them how the little boys demanded a dollar apiece for washing these same garments; and how the miners to escape this extortion sent their linen to China in ships on Monday morning, and China sent them back on Saturday, only it was Saturday six weeks.

Next Mr. Robinson proceeded to draw a parallel between England and various nations on the other side of the Atlantic, not at all complimentary to his island home; above all, he was eloquent on the superior dignity of labor in new countries.

“I heard one of your clodhoppers say the other day, ’The squire is a good gentleman, he often gives me a day’s work.’  Now I should think it was the clodhopper gave the gentleman the day’s work, and the gentleman gave him a shilling for it—­and made five by it.”