From Squire to Squatter Part 25

"Haven't you, Sarah?"

"Hain't I what?"

"Promised to marry me."

"Well, Mister Archie Broadbent, now I comes to think on't, I believes I 'ave. You know, mister, you wouldn't never 'ave married me."

"No, Sarah."

"Well, and I'm perfectly sick o' toilin' up and down these stairs.

That's 'ow it is, sir."

"Well, Sarah," said Archie, "bring us some more nice tea, and I'll forgive you for this once, but you mustn't do it any more."

It was late ere Bob and Harry went away. Archie lay back at once, and when, a few minutes after, the ex-policeman's wife came in to see how he was, she found him sound and fast.

Archie was back again at Burley Old Farm, that is why he smiled in his dreams.

"So I'm going to be a hired man in the bush," he said to himself next morning. "That's a turn in the kaleidoscope of fortune."

However, as the reader will see, it did not quite come to this with Archie Broadbent.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

A MINER'S MARRIAGE.

It was the cool season in Sydney. In other words, it was winter just commencing; so, what with balmy air and beauty everywhere around, no wonder Archie soon got well. He had the kindest treatment too, and he had youth and hope.

He could now write home to his parents and Elsie a long, cheerful letter without any twinge of conscience. He was going to begin work soon in downright earnest, and get straight away from city life, and all its allurements; he wondered, he said, it had not occurred to him to do this before, only it was not too late to mend even yet. He hated city life now quite as much as he had previously loved it, and been enamoured of it.

It never rains but it pours, and on the very day after he posted his packet to Burley he received a registered letter from his uncle. It contained a bill of exchange for fifty pounds. Archie blushed scarlet when he saw it.

Now had this letter and its contents been from his father, knowing all he did of the straits at home, he would have sent the money back. But his uncle evidently knew whom he had to deal with; for he a.s.sured Archie in his letter that it was a loan, not a gift. He might want it he said, and he really would be obliging him by accepting it. He--Uncle Ramsay-- knew what the world was, and so on and so forth, and the letter ended by requesting Archie to say nothing about it to his parents at present.

"Dear old boy," said Archie half aloud, and tears of grat.i.tude sprang to his eyes. "How thoughtful and kind! Well, it'll be a loan, and I'll pray every night that G.o.d may spare him till I get home to shake his honest brown paw, and thrust the fifty pounds back into it. No, it would be really unkind to refuse it."

He went straight away--walking on feathers--to Bob's hotel. He found him and Harry sitting out on the balcony drinking sherbet. He took a seat beside them.

"I'm in clover, boys," he cried exultingly, as he handed the cash to Bob to look at.

"So you are," said Bob, reading the figures. "Well, this is what my old mother would call a G.o.dsend. I always said your Uncle Ramsay was as good as they make 'em."

"It looks a lot of money to me at present," said Archie. "I'll have all that to begin life with; for I have still a few pounds left to pay my landlady, and to buy a blanket or two."

"Well, as to what you'll buy, Archie," said Bob Cooper, "if you don't mind leaving that to us, we will manage all, cheaper and better than you could; for we're old on the job."

"Oh! I will with pleasure, only--"

"I know all about that. You'll settle up. Well, we're all going to be settlers. Eh? See the joke?"

"Bob doesn't often say funny things," said Harry; "so it must be a fine thing to be going to get married."

"Ay, lad, and I'm going to do it properly. Worst of it is, Archie, I don't know anybody to invite. Oh, we must have a dinner! Bother breakfasts, and hang honeymoons. No, no; a run round Sydney will suit Sarah better than a year o' honeymooning nonsense. Then we'll all go off in the boat to Brisbane. That'll be a honeymoon and a half in itself. Hurrah! Won't we all be so happy! I feel sure Sarah's a jewel."

"How long did you know her, Bob, before you asked her the momentous question?"

"Asked her _what_!"

"To marry you."

"Oh, only a week! La! that's long enough. I could see she was true blue, and as soft as rain. Bless her heart! I say, Archie, who'll we ask?"

"Well, I know a few good fellows--"

"Right. Let us have them. What's their names?"

Out came Bob's notebook, and down went a dozen names.

"That'll be ample," said Archie.

"Well," Bob acquiesced with a sigh, "I suppose it must. Now we're going to be spliced by special licence, Sarah and I. None of your doing things by half. And Harry there is going to order the cabs and carriages, and favours and music, and the parson, and everything firstchop."

The idea of "ordering the parson" struck Archie as somewhat incongruous; but Bob had his own way of saying things, and it was evident he would have his own way in doing things too for once.

"And," continued Bob, "the ex-policeman's wife and I are going to buy the bonnie things to-morrow. And as for the 'bobby' himself, we'll have to send him away for the day. He is too fond of one thing, and would spoil the splore."

Next day sure enough Bob did start off with the "bobby's" wife to buy the bonnie things. A tall, handsome fellow Bob looked too; and the tailor having done his best, he was altogether a dandy. He would persist in giving his mother, as he called her, his arm on the street, and the appearance of the pair of them caused a good many people to look after them and smile.

However, the "bonnie things" were bought, and it was well he had someone to look after him, else he would have spent money uselessly as well as freely. Only, as Bob said, "It was but one day in his life, why shouldn't he make the best of it?"

He insisted on making his mother a present of a nice little gold watch.

No, he _wouldn't_ let her have a silver one, and it _should_ be "set with blue-stones." He would have that one, and no other.

"Too expensive? No, indeed!" he cried. "Make out the bill, master, and I'll knock down my cheque. Hurrah! one doesn't get married every morning, and it isn't everybody who gets a girl like Sarah when he does get spliced! So there!"

Archie had told Bob and Harry of his first dinner at the hotel, and how kind and considerate in every way the waiter had been, and how he had often gone back there to have a talk.

"It is there then, and nowhere else," said Bob, "we'll have our wedding dinner."

Archie would not gainsay this; and nothing would satisfy the lucky miner but chartering a whole flat for a week.

"That's the way we'll do it," he said; "and now look here, as long as the week lasts, any of your friends can drop into breakfast, dinner, or supper. We are going to do the thing proper, if we sell our best jackets to help to pay the bill. What say, old chummie?"

"Certainly," said Harry; "and if ever I'm fool enough to get married, I'll do the same kind o' thing."

A happy thought occurred to Archie the day before the marriage.

"How much loose cash have you, Bob?"