‘I may state now,’ remarked that gentleman, ‘that the price, four pounds per head, mentioned to me on your account by your agent is a liberal one, as markets go. I shall endeavour to give you value in kind.’
‘It’s a good price,’ asserted Dick; ‘but Mr. O’Desmond’s cattle are cheaper at four pounds all round than many another man’s about here at fifty shillings. If he lets me turn back any beast I don’t fancy, we’ll take away the primest lot of cattle to begin a dairy with as has travelled the line for years.’
‘I will give you my general idea of the sort of cattle I prefer,’ said Wilfred, not minded to commence by leaving the whole management in any servant’s hands, ‘then you can select such as appear to answer the description.’
‘All right, sir,’ quoth Mr. Evans, mounting the fence. ‘I suppose you want ’em large-framed cattle, good colours, looking as if they’d run to milk and not to beef, not under three, and not more than five year old, and putty quiet in their looks and ways.’
‘That is exactly the substance of what I was going to say to you,’ said Wilfred, with some surprise. ‘It will save me the trouble of explaining.’
‘We may as well begin, sir,’ said Dick, addressing himself to the proprietor. Then, in quite another tone, ‘Open the rails, boys; look sharp, and let ’em into the drafting-yards.’
The cattle were driven through a succession of yards after such a fashion that Wilfred was enabled to perceive how the right of choice could be exercised. By the time the operation was concluded he felt himself to be inducted into the art and mystery of ‘drafting.’ Also, he respected himself as having appreciably helped to select and separate the one hundred prepossessing-looking kine which now stood in a separate yard, recognised as his property.
‘You will have no reason to be dissatisfied with your choice,’ said O’Desmond. ‘They look a nice lot. I always brand any cattle before they leave my yard. You will not object to a numeral being put on them before they go? It will assist in their identification in case of any coming back.’
‘Coming back! – come back twenty miles?’ queried Wilfred, with amazement. ‘How could they get back such a distance?’
‘Just as you would – by walking it, and a hundred to the back of that. So I think, say, No. 1. brand – they are A1 certainly – will be a prudent precaution.’
‘Couldn’t do a better thing,’ assented Dick. ‘We’ll brand ’em again when we go home, sir; but if we lost ’em anyway near the place, they’d be all here before you could say Jack Robinson.’
A fire was quickly lighted, the iron brands were heated, the cows driven by a score at a time into a narrow yard, and for the first time in his life Wilfred saw the red-hot iron applied to the hide of the live animal. The pain, like much evil in this world, if intense, was brief; the cows cringed and showed disapproval, but soon appeared to forget. The morning was not far advanced when Wilfred Effingham found himself riding behind a drove, or ‘mob’ (as Dick phrased it), of his own cattle.
‘There goes the best lot of heifers this day in the country,’ said the old man, ‘let the others be where they may. Mr. O’Desmond’s a rare man for givin’ you a good beast if you give him a fair price; you may trust him like yourself, but he’s a hard man and bitter enough if anybody tries to take advantage of him.’
‘And quite right too, Dick. I take Mr. O’Desmond to be a most honourable man, with whom I shouldn’t care to come to cross purposes.’
‘No man ever did much good that tried that game, sir. He’s a bad man to get on the wrong side of.’
CHAPTER V
‘CALLED ON BY THE COUNTY’
When the important drove reached Warbrok, great was the excitement. Wilfred’s absence was the loss of Hamlet from the play; his return the signal for joy and congratulation. The little commonwealth was visibly agitated as the tired cattle trailed along the track to the stock-yard, with Dick sitting bolt upright in his saddle behind them, and Wilfred essaying to crack the inconveniently long whip provided for him.
The girls made their appearance upon the verandah; Andrew looked forth as interested, yet under protest. Guy walked behind, and much admired the vast number and imposing appearance of the herd; while Captain and Mrs. Effingham stood arm in arm at a safe distance appreciating the prowess of their first-born.
‘Now, sir,’ quoth the ready Dick, ‘we’ll put ’em in the yard and make ’em safe to-night; to-morrow, some one will have to tail ’em.’
‘Tail them?’ said Wilfred. ‘Some of their ears have been scolloped, I see; but surely it is not necessary to cut their tails in a hot climate like this?’
‘S’cuse me, sir,’ said Dick respectfully, ‘I wouldn’t put the knife to them for pounds; “tailing” means shepherdin’.’
‘And what does “shepherding” mean? I thought shepherds were only for sheep?’
‘Well, sir, I never heerd talk of shepherdin’ at home, but it’s a currency word for follerin’ anything that close, right agin’ their tails, that a shepherd couldn’t be more careful with his sheep; so we talk of shepherdin’ a s’picious c’rakter, or a lot of stock, or a man that’s tossicated with notes stickin’ out of his pocket, or a young woman, or anything that wants lookin’ after very partickler.’
‘Now I understand,’ said Wilfred. ‘It’s not a bad word, and might be used in serious matters.’
‘No mistake about that, sir. Now the yard’s finished off and topped up, we’ll soon be able to make a start with the dairy. There’ll be half-a-dozen calves within the week, and more afore the month’s out. There’s nothin’ breaks in cows to stop like their young calves; you’ll soon see ’em hanging about the yard as if they’d been bred here, ’specially as the feed is so forrard. There’s no mistake, a myst season do make everything go pleasant.’
When the cattle were in the yard, and the slip rails made safe by having spare posts put across them, Wilfred unsaddled his provisional mount and walked into the house in a satisfactory mental condition.
‘So, behold you of return!’ quoted Rosamond, running to meet him, and marching him triumphantly into the dining-room, where all was ready for tea. ‘The time has been rather long. Papa has been walking about, not knowing exactly what to do, or leave undone; Guy shooting, not over-successfully. The most steadily employed member of the household, and the happiest, I suppose, has been Andrew, digging without intermission the whole time.’
‘I wish we could dig too, or have some employment found for us,’ said Annabel; ‘girls are shamefully unprovided with real work, except stocking-mending. Jeanie won’t let us do anything in the kitchen, and really, that is the only place where there is any fun. The house is so large, and echoing at night when the wind blows. And only think, we found the mark of a pistol bullet in the dining-room wall at one end, and there is another in the ceiling!’
‘How do you know it was a pistol shot?’ inquired Wilfred. ‘Some one threw a salt-cellar at the butler in the good old times.’
‘Perhaps it was fired in the good old times; perhaps it killed some one – how horrible! Perhaps he was carried out through the passage. But we know it was a shot, because Guy poked about and found the bullet flattened out.’
‘Well, we must ask Evans; very likely old Colonel Warleigh fired pistols in his mad fits. He used to sit, they say, night after night, drinking and cursing by himself after his wife died and his sons left him. No one dared go near him when his pistols were loaded. But we need not think of these things now, Annabel. He is dead and gone, and his sons are not in this part of the country. So I see you have had flower-beds made while I was away. I declare the wistaria and bignonia are breaking into flower. How gorgeous they will look!’
‘Yes, mamma said she could not exist without