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‘No, my man! You’ve got your education to attend to, and to see mother and the children settled in Sydney first. I can’t afford to stay long. So you’ll have to be mother’s right-hand man while I’m away.’

‘I suppose I’m to go to school when we get to Sydney?’—in a slightly aggrieved tone.

‘Of course you are—and to the University afterwards, unless you are not able to pass the Matric.—which I should be sorry to think for a moment you couldn’t manage.’

‘Oh dear! I suppose it will be years and years of Latin and Greek, and history and geometry, before I can make a start in life for myself. If I’m to be a squatter—and I’m not going to be ssss1 anything else—what is the use of losing all this time?’

‘My dear boy, you are to have the education of a gentleman. Whether you decide for a bush life or a profession, a mining investor’s or a soldier’s, it will be equally useful—I may say, indispensable—to you. But there is ever so much time before us in which to settle such a very important question. How well the country is looking! I haven’t seen so much grass and water since I left home.’