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"Seeing your name on yer bags, an' knowin' you was belonging to the Bossiers, I ask if yer might be a daughter of Dick Melvyn, of Bruggabrong, out by Timlinbilly." "Yes, I am." "Well, miss, please remember me most kindly to yer pa; he was a good boss was Dick Melvyn. I hope he's doin' well. I'm Billy Haizelip, brother to Mary and Jane. You remember Jane, I s'pose, miss?"
My uncle Julius, the only other member of the family besides the servants, was away "up the country" on some business or another, and was not expected home for a month or so. The Bossiers and Beechams were leaders of swelldom among the squattocracy up the country, and firm and intimate friends.
Father was admitted into swelldom merely by right of his position. His pedigree included nothing beyond a grandfather. My mother, however, was a full-fledged aristocrat. She was one of the Bossiers of Caddagat, who numbered among their ancestry one of the depraved old pirates who pillaged England with William the Conqueror.
Again, it was this way, grannie did not come to my rescue on this occasion on account of her attitude towards my father. The Bossiers were not at enmity with him, but they were so disgusted with his insobriety that they never visited Possum Gully, and did not assist us as much as they would have done had my father's failure been attributable to some cause more deserving of sympathy.
The Bossiers and Beechams were congenial spirits in every way they lived in the one sphere and held the one set of ideas, the only difference between them, and that an unnoticeable one, being that the Bossiers, though in comfortable circumstances, were not at all rich, while Harold Beecham was immensely wealthy.
Had there been any charge for their board and lodging, the Bossiers would surely have made a fortune. I interviewed on an average fifty tramps a week, and seldom saw the same man twice. What a great army they were!
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