ime, then, without our knowing it?'
asked Nina archly.

'It is not of the Cabinet I was speaking, mademoiselle. It was of the
country.' And he answered haughtily.

'And where would you go, Dick, and find better?' said Kate.

'Anywhere. I should find better in America, in Canada, in the Far West, in
New Zealand--but I mean to try in Australia.'

'And what will you do when you get there?' asked Kilgobbin, with a grim
humour in his look.

'Do tell me, Cousin Dick, for who knows that it might not suit me also?'

Young Kearney filled his glass, and drained it without speaking. At last
he said, 'It will be for you, sir, to say if I make the trial. It is clear
enough, I have no course open to me here. For a few hundred pounds, or,
indeed, for anything you like to give me, you get rid of me for ever. It
will be the one piece of economy my whole life comprises.'

'Stay at home, Dick, and give to your own country the energy you are
willing to bestow on a strange land,' said Kate.

'And labour side by side with the peasant I have looked down upon since I
was able to walk.'

'Don't look down on him, then--do it no longer. If you would treat the
first stranger you met in the bush as your equal, begin the Christian
practice in your own country.'

'But he needn't do that at all,' broke in the old man. 'If he would take
to strong shoes and early rising here at Kilgobbin, he need never go to
Geelong for a living. Your great-grandfathers lived here for centuries, and
the old house that sheltered them is still standing.'

'What should I stay for--?' He had got thus far when his eyes met Nina's,
and he stopped and hesitated, and, as a deep blush covered his face,
faltered out, 'Gorman O'Shea says he is ready to go with me, and two
fellows with less to detain them in their own country would be hard to
find.'

'O'Shea will do well enough,' said the old man; 'he was not brought up
to kid-leather boots and silk linings in his greatcoat. There's stuff
in _him_, and if it comes to sleeping under a haystack or dining on a
red-herring, he'll not rise up with rheumatism or heartburn. And what's
better than all, he'll not think himself a hero because he mends his own
boots or lights his own kitchen-fire.'

'A letter for your honour,' said the servant, entering with a very
informal-looking note on coarse paper, and fastened with a wafer. 'The
gossoon, sir, is waiting for an answer; he run every mile from Moate.'

'Read it, Kitty,' sa