Читать книгу The Last Chance: A Tale of the Golden West онлайн

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The journey was resumed, the saddle was removed from the leader’s back, and placed in the waggonette, as were also the effects of the new associates. Apparently willing workers, they proved themselves cheery and entertaining companions.

ssss1Unaffected in manner and simple of speech, it was yet apparent, though they conversed on perfectly equal terms with old Jack as with the Commissioner, that they had moved in the haute volée of English society.

They made no statement to that effect, but it was indirectly plain to the Commissioner, himself an aristocrat by birth and social surroundings, that such was the case. It was many a year since he had been ‘home,’ yet, nevertheless, the merry chatter of these youngsters, which, though careless, was redolent of the best English ‘form,’ was refreshing in the life of a man who, though long absent from the old country, was yet in full sympathy with her ideas and traditions. So they fared on for the long remaining hours of the day, until they reached the spinifex flat, immediately adjacent to the base of the hill which had been so long within sight, but without reaching the gradually ascending ‘rise’ which led to a plateau slightly above the level of the plain. Here they halted—to feed the horses and await the rising of the moon—after which the journey would recommence.