an make it as well as you can, sonny," replied Gerrard, as he sat down
and began plucking the other bird.

"Fearful lot of cubs at the 'Union' now in Sydney," said the older man,
meditatively. "Hate going into the place. Met the two young Arlingtons
there the other day, and asked 'em if they were going home to the
station. 'No jolly fear,' said one of the cubs--they have just come back
from college in England--'we've had enough of Portland Downs and bullock
punching, branding, and all the rest of the beastly thing.' 'But you'll
go and see your father?' I asked. 'Well, I don't think so, you know, Mr
Westonley,' drawled the elder cub, 'it's a beastly long way, and takes
such a devil of a time to get there--fourteen hundred miles by steamer
is no joke, and we have to be back in England in five months. So the
governor is coming down here to have a palaver with us.' It hurt me,
Tom, to hear these two youngsters talking like that, for Arlington is
over seventy years of age. And they were good lads until he sent them
to England to college with more money than was good for them. And it has
done them harm--made cads of 'em," and he viciously tugged at the wing
feathers of the bird he was plucking. "Your father used to say that
Oxford and Cambridge turned out more good men, and more moneyed snobs
into the world than all the other colleges in the universe."

"Daresay," said Tom Gerrard, carelessly, as he began a surgical
operation on his turkey. "I have heard my father say that old Arlington,
who was one of the best of the old time squatters, made a mistake in
sending those two boys home with unlimited money and credit. I suppose
they'll turn out rotters."

"Most likely. And Arlington--by thunder, can't that old fellow of
seventy ride through scrub--thinks that they will take his place on
Portland Downs when he dies, and be a credit to the colony. _I_ wouldn't
have 'em on Marumbah as jackeroos, at a pound a week. But yet there is
good stuff in them, Tom, and good English blood--the best in the world.
Hallo! this turkey has eggs; just the very thing for the crawfish soup
to-morrow."

Presently two shots rang out in quick succession.

"Toby has got on to 'em," said Westonley; "how do you cook black duck,
freshly-killed, sonny, when you're camping out?"

"Grill 'em."

"The whole carcass?"

"Yes."

"Well, you must have degrading, greedy customs up in Queensland. Why,
the only part--but there, I'll show you presently when To