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

87 страница из 92

ssss1There had been sadness and heartburnings on all these occasions of uprooting ties and friendships which more than once had struck deep into a kindly soil; but the inherited pioneer instinct had triumphed over all regrets. Sometimes the exodus had been from a country life to that of cities; then the regret was softened by the anticipation of metropolitan privileges—the meeting with friends and relatives, the enchantments of novelty and romance. Still, again, the departure from these new delights to a distant, untried region, a strange environment, an unknown society, was proportionately distasteful.

But the Bannerets were an adaptable race: they soon familiarised themselves with new surroundings. Hot or cold, plain or forest, ‘out back’ or near town, it seemed alike to them. They discovered kindred spirits in the strangers amongst whom, for the first time, they were thrown. They were sociable to the point of tolerating those whom they could not admire; being civil and friendly to all sorts and conditions of men, ready to do a kindness whenever such opportunity came in their way, while preserving, as far as in them lay, that standard of conduct and manners which had been habitual from childhood. Small wonder, then, that they never left one of the country towns, to which the exigencies of official or pastoral life guided their steps, without public regrets being expressed. A presentation in every case accompanied the address, which, in the shape of coin of the realm, was not unwelcome. Their residence in this, a fertile as well as ssss1 gold-bearing district, had exceeded the usual term, and the manifestations of public sympathy were therefore more general and pronounced.