dad. He wants me here just to have somebody to order about. However,
we two were hard up; and what's five quid to him--once in sixteen hard
years?"

"Oh, but I am sorry for you. Did you never want to come back home?"

"Be a lawyer's clerk and rot here--in some such place as this?" he cried
in contempt. "What! if the old man set me up in a home to-day, I would
kick it down about my ears--or else die there before the third day was
out."

"And where else is it that you hope to die?"

"In the bush somewhere; in the sea; on a blamed mountain-top for choice.
At home? Yes! the world's my home; but I expect I'll die in a hospital
some day. What of that? Any place is good enough, as long as I've lived;
and I've been everything you can think of almost but a tailor or a
soldier. I've been a boundary rider; I've sheared sheep; and humped my
swag; and harpooned a whale. I've rigged ships, and prospected for gold,
and skinned dead bullocks,--and turned my back on more money than the
old man would have scraped in his whole life. Ha, ha!"

He overwhelmed her. She pulled herself together and managed to utter,
"Time to rest now."

He straightened himself up, away from the wall, and in a severe voice
said, "Time to go."

But he did not move. He leaned back again, and hummed thoughtfully a bar
or two of an outlandish tune.