en to
sleep out on the ground with one's head on a saddle is found preferable
to a spring mattress and sheets. He enjoyed swimming rivers with his
clothes on his head, and would have liked the sensation of fatigue
described to him. Peter would probably always look like a cavalry
officer, and would not have been easily mistaken for anything else,
even if he had worn a garment of skins laced together with wire. He
was burned a deep brown, some shades deeper than the colour of his
moustache, and his eyes had come to have a certain fixed gravity in
them which did not alter even when he laughed. His clothes, as Ross
said, were still hopelessly clean and well cut, but he rode better than
any man on the estancia, and did as good a day's work as any of the
rest.

When the day's work was over Hopwood could be relied on to provide
baths. Ross, as has been said, considered himself an expert at
swizzling cocktails, and all three men had a fancy for playing the
banjo, which they could never get in tune.

In spite of many drawbacks our two friends enjoyed the return to the
primitive conditions of life. To be uncivilized has indeed
considerable charm when the blood is young and the muscles are strong
and wiry. Peter was for getting some of his own sheep out here, and a
few good horses. And Toffy had schemes for an immense shipping
industry, which would carry cattle at so low a rate to England that
beef might be sold there at fourpence a pound, which, as he remarked,
would benefit all classes. Ross gave his two years' experience with a
weight of wisdom. He had a share in the estancia, and having tried to
live in London in a Government office on two hundred a year, found
Argentine by contrast the only country in the world for a white man.

Peter himself, as he sat on the cow's skull near the door, and saw the
pleasant, simple life of the place, the major-domo's children ambling
along on their horse, the flock of geese, and the peons loitering by
the patio, was inclined for the time being to put a very low price on
civilization, and to wonder how Jane would like a trip out here.

'Who knows,' he said to himself, 'my brother and I may do a deal. I
may find him a patriarchal sort of cove, living the simple life and
tending his own flocks and herds. He will migrate with his wives and
little ones to Bowshott, and Jane and I will annex the flocks and herds
in Argentine. The place might have its attractions for Jane; and,
any