the way for a man of my height and size. Last time I
weighed I pulled down six-and-twenty. When I go back to England I shall
stick to my two meals a day, and go in regularly for racquets and horse
exercise."

"And when is that going to be, Mr. Atherton?" Wilfrid asked.

"I have not settled yet, Wilfrid. I have been longer stationary here
than I have been in any place since I left college. Occasionally I get a
fit of longing to be back in London again, but it seldom lasts long.
However, I suppose I shall yield to it one of these days."

"You are doing very well here, Mr. Atherton. You said only the other day
that your consignment of plants had sold wonderfully, and that you
expected to make nearly a thousand pounds this year."

"That is true enough, Wilfrid; but you see, unfortunately or
fortunately, whichever way you like to put it, the thousand pounds are
of no importance to me one way or the other. I am really what is
generally considered to be a rich man, and from the day I left England,
now just two years ago, my income has been simply accumulating, for
beyond the two or three pounds a month your mother lets me pay her I
spend absolutely nothing."

"It must be very dull for you here, Mr. Atherton, accustomed as you have
been to be always either travelling or in London, to be cut off from the
world with only just our society, and that of the Allens and Mitfords,
and two or three neighbours."

"I do not look dull, do I, Mrs. Renshaw?" Mr. Atherton laughed.

"No; I have never seen you dull since I knew you, Mr. Atherton, not even
when you were toiling along exhausted and worn out with that child on
your shoulders and the weight of the helpless man on your arms. We shall
miss you awfully when you do go; shall we not, Marion?" Marion was now
nineteen, and had developed, as Wilfrid told her in some surprise--for
brothers seldom think their sisters good-looking--into a very pretty
girl.

"It is not coming just yet," Mr. Atherton said; "but I have, I think,
pretty well exhausted the forest for a distance of fifty miles round,
and now that things are settling down I shall take more extensive trips
to the mountains in the north-east and the Waikato country, and the
strip of land lying north of Auckland. I have never been absent above
two or three days at a time; but in future I may be away for weeks. But
this will always be my head-quarters, Mrs. Renshaw. You see, your
husband is becoming a formidable rival of mine