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Warmly, yet with discreet sympathy, the young man rejoined: "Sir, I respect, and I hope I understand, your confidence." Then, a little nervously: "Might I ask her name?" The reply was spoken to the portrait: "Barbara Barbara Golding." With Louis Bachelor the young squatter approached Wandenong homestead in some excitement.
They ran out, and tried to comfort her, and gave her some cream to drink; but it did not amount to much. Dame Golding had secretly envied Dame Clementina for her silver milk-pans. Nan and her mother knew why their visitor was so suddenly rooted to the spot, of course, but she did not. She thought her feet were paralyzed, and she kept begging them to send for her husband.
"Then the townsman have beaten the seaman after all," exclaimed one who was inclined to triumph. "Not so," returned Jeff quickly, "for I'm a seaman myself and take sides with the fishermen." "Well said; give us your hand, mate," cried John Golding, one of the latter, holding out his hand, which our hero grasped warmly, for he had known the man in former years.
Perhaps George Osgood, father of John Osgood, and owner of Wandenong, did not make an allowance to Barbara Golding for her services as counsellor and confidant of his family; but neither did he subtract anything from her earnings in those infrequent years when she journeyed alone to Sydney on those mysterious visits which so mightily puzzled the good people of Wandenong.
I shall lose the best sport; and Andrew snatching at him again to make him stay, he broke from him and ran as hard as he could after the crowd, that was now got some way from us. 'You hear and see this, Mrs. Golding? says Andrew, turning to her, his mild countenance grown dark with anger.
That kind of girl is open to flattery." "And then, Golding?" "Then! Well, I'm no judge of women, but it seems to me that once they're fond of flattery you can make them do almost anything. She was a good-looking girl, was Harriet Payne, and if some young slip of a dandy got hold of her well, she might make a bargain with him and get released that way." "Was she that kind of girl?"
Once in his room he sinks upon the bed, his mind and body thoroughly fatigued by the strain that has been placed upon them. For more than an hour he is motionless; then his reserve gradually returns. "I have fulfilled my pledge," he says to himself. "It had to be done to-day, for otherwise I should have been compelled to die with Golding.
I would be gosh-blasted if I wouldn't, by Golding's bow-key ! "By Golding's bow-key" was a very solemn objurgation. It could be used by professors of religion, but under great provocation only. It harks back to the time when every man who had oxen named them Buck and Golding, and the bow-key held the yoke on. Ah, those far-off, Arcadian days, and the blessing of blowing those who lived in them!
In another moment a man, leading a horse, came out of the gloomy shadows into the clearing. "Master Gilbert! Master Gilbert! You're late. Thank God you're back once more. I've a hare in the pot which begins to smell excellently." "I'll do justice to your cooking, Golding, never fear. I'll look to the mare first; she's had a trying day."
Think, however, that the troubles that now lie upon us might not have been ours had not our father died when he did, which was the cause of our being taken into the house of our mother's sister, Mrs. Margaret Golding; a happy thing we then thought it, that she would receive us, for we were in great straits; so I will begin my history at that sad period.
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