Page:The Toll of the Bush.pdf/77

tune and looking well pleased with himself. The native, who had ten miles to ride, making twenty in all, was equally pleased as yet.

Presently the Major paused and pished irritably. He had recognised the tune he was humming and discontinued it on the spot. ‘The air seems charged with the wretched things,’ he thought. He stood a moment looking along the shining river in the direction of the bar, then turned in at a side gate and walked slowly up the path to the house. ‘I wonder whether Hernshaw will get carried away like the rest. Mind too well balanced, I should say.’ A shade of anxiety and annoyance crossed his countenance. ‘I always thought her like that until—Bah! What makes religion such a cold, inhuman business when it’s carried to excess? This Fletcher now, is there anything about him beyond what he says? If one a fiver, would it be obtainable there sooner than elsewhere? If one needed sympathy, would it come more readily from him than from—Hernshaw, for instance?’ His eye had caught sight of that gentleman on the verandah. ‘No, by Gad! There is more quick humanity in that chap’s little finger than in the whole of Fletcher’s carcass.’

Geoffrey, his finger between the leaves of a book, looked pleasantly at the Major as he mounted the steps.

‘Come for a stroll round,’ the latter said,

Geoffrey rose obediently and dropped his book into the rocker. ‘Miss Milward has offered to introduce me to Mr. Fletcher,’ he said, ‘but I don’t suppose it is urgent.’

‘Not a bit,’ the Major replied with alacrity. ‘He is here then ?’ he asked in a lower voice.