An Outback Marriage quotes

It was a summer’s evening in Sydney, and the northeast wind that comes down from New Guinea and the tropical islands over leagues of warm sea, brought on its wings a heavy depressing moisture.

In the streets people walked listlessly, perspired, mopped themselves, and abused their much-vaunted climate. Everyone who could manage it was out of town, either on the heights of Moss Vale or the Blue Mountains, escaping from the Inferno of Sydney.

In the streets people walked listlessly, perspired, mopped themselves, and abused their much-vaunted climate.

Everyone who could manage it was out of town, either on the heights of Moss Vale or the Blue Mountains, escaping from the Inferno of Sydney.

In the Cassowary Club, weary, pallid waiters brought iced drinks to such of the members as were condemned to spend the summer in town. The gong had sounded, and in ones and twos members shuffled out of the smoking-room, and went in to dinner.

“Oh, I don’t suppose he’ll be so bad,” he said. “I’ve asked him here tonight to see what he’s like, and if he’s no good I’ll drop him. It’s the principle I object to. Country people are always at this sort of thing.

They’d ask me to meet an Alderney bull and entertain him till they send for him.

What am I to do with an unknown new chum? I’d sooner have an Alderney bull—he’d be easier to arrange for. He’d stop where he was put, anyhow.”

It’s the principle I object to. Country people are always at this sort of thing. They’d ask me to meet an Alderney bull and entertain him till they send for him. What am I to do with an unknown new chum?

I’d sooner have an Alderney bull⁠—he’d be easier to arrange for. He’d stop where he was put, anyhow.

”

“That’s like me,” said Gordon. “I’d sooner run a mile than fight, any time.

I’m like a rat if I’m cornered, but it takes a man with a stockwhip to corner me. I never start fighting till I’m done running.

But we needn’t get into a row. I vote we go. Will you come, Carew?”

At tea the talk flowed freely, and the two bush boys, shy at first, began to expand as Mary Grant talked to them.

Put a pretty girl and a young and impressionable bushman together, and in the twinkling of an eye you have a Sir Galahad ready to do anything for the service of his lady.

Lightheartedly they consented to stay the night, in the hope of seeing Hugh, to deliver their message about the weaners—they seemed to have satisfactorily arranged the question of mustering.

“Only a side of bacon and a bottle of whisky. The whisky was for old Ned the possum trapper, and they say that Ned walked fourteen miles down the river in hopes that it might have come ashore.

Ned reckons he has never done any tracking, but if he could track anything it would be whisky.

”

“My darling, my darling!” she said. “All the while you were walking with that girl, I knew you were dying to come and kiss me!”

For such is the faith of women.

They stopped for a little while, and then moved on after the others, pausing now and again in the shadows. The girl poured out all her artless tale—how she had been awake night after night, waiting for the day he should come.

The sheep themselves, to begin with, seem always in league against their owners.

Merinos, though apparently estimable animals, are in reality dangerous monomaniacs, whose sole desire is to ruin the man that owns them.

Their object is to die, and to do so with as much trouble to their owners as they possibly can.

He dared not prosecute them. No local jury would convict in face of the hostility that would be aroused. They had made “alibis” a special study; the very judges were staggered by the calmness and plausibility with which they got themselves out of difficulties.

A big station with a lot of hostile neighbours is like a whale with the killers round it; it is open to attack on all sides, and cannot retaliate.

A match dropped carelessly in a patch of grass sets miles of country in a blaze.

Here and there, to escape observation, they had to walk in the water, and Hugh, looking round, saw his companion wading after him, with face firm-set and eyes ablaze.

It was a manhunt, the most exciting of all hunting.

He laughed silently at the girl’s flushed and excited face. As he reached out to help her over some fallen timber, she took his hand with a firm grip that set his nerves tingling. They pushed on until almost abreast of Red Mick’s dwelling;

“

Ha! Well, now they’ve got me they mightn’t like me, don’t you see?

I never took no stock in them unclaimed-money fakes. I never see any money goin’ beggin’ yet, long as I’ve lived, but what some chap had his hands on it quick enough. But I s’pose it’s all right.”

“Shoot him any place. In the earhole, or the shoulder, or the ribs, or the flank. Any place at all.

Shoot him all over if you like. One or two bullets don’t hurt a beast. It takes a lead-mine to kill some of ’em.

”

What a ride that was! The inexperienced reader is apt to imagine that because a plain is level, it is smooth, but no greater fallacy exists.

The surface of a plain is always bad galloping.

The rain washes away the soil from between the tussocks, which stand up like miniature mountains; the heat cracks the ground till it opens in crevices, sometimes a foot wide and a yard or two deep;

He turned and pulled Considine forward, and once more husband and wife stood face to face. Considine, alias Keogh, smiled in a sickly way, tried to meet his wife’s eyes, and failed altogether. She regarded him with a bold, unwinking stare.

“Him!” she said. “Him me husban’! This old crockerdile? I never seen him before in me life.”

A look of hopeless perplexity settled on Considine’s features for a moment, and then a ray of intelligence seemed to break in on him. She repeated her statement.

Considine hesitated for a moment in visible distress. Then, pulling himself together, and looking boldly from one to the other, he replied—

“Now that you mention it, ma’am, I don’t think as ever you did. I must ha’ made some mistake.”

He walked rapidly away, leaving Gordon and Peggy face to face.

“I’m Tommy Prince,” said the stranger. “I jist kem in from my camp today for them onions.”

Hugh drew a long breath. The luck had turned at last.

The old man looked round him in silence.

“Serve me damn well right,” he said at last. “I ought to have got the other side of the buffalo!”

Not another word did he say, as he transferred his saddle to one of the blacks’ horses. But in the camp, that night, the old man came over to Hugh holding a paper in his hand.

Let the Gordons alone—they’re decent young fellows, the both of ’em—and come along o’ me to England. That young English feller reckons we’d be as good as the Prince of Wales, very near. Will you come, Peggy?”

It is the characteristic of great minds to think quickly, and act promptly. Peggy did both.

“Mick!” she said, calling to her brother in a sharp, authoritative voice: “Mick! I’ve been talking to Paddy here, and we’ve reckoned we’ve had enough of this fooling, and we’re off to England.