More figuring and rubbing out.

Finally Joe, in loud, decisive tones, announced, "FOUR thousand, NO
'undered an' twenty poun', fourteen shillin's an'--"

"Bah! YOU blockhead!" Dad blurted out, and jumped off the sofa and went
to bed.

We all turned in.

We were not in bed long when the dog barked and a horse entered the yard.
There was a clink of girth-buckles; a saddle thrown down; then a thump,
as though with a lump of blue-metal, set the dog yelping lustily. We lay
listening till a voice called out at the door--"All in bed?" Then we knew
it was Dan, and Dad and Dave sprang out in their shirts to let him in.
All of us jumped up to see Dan. This time he had been away a long while,
and when the slush-lamp was lit and fairly going, how we stared and
wondered at his altered looks! He had grown a long whisker, and must have
stood inches higher than Dad.

Dad was delighted. He put a fire on, made tea, and he and Dan talked till
near daybreak--Dad of the harvest, and the Government dam that was
promised, and the splendid grass growing in the paddock; Dan of the great
dry plains, and the shearing-sheds out back, and the chaps he had met
there. And he related in a way that made Dad's eyes glisten and Joe's
mouth open, how, with a knocked-up wrist, he shore beside Proctor and big
Andy Purcell, at Welltown, and rung the shed by half a sheep.

Dad ardently admired Dan.