“Oh!  Mr. Brandon,” said Mrs. Phillips, calmly, “there surely is no such need for hurry.”

“Everything is going to the dogs at my station.  I will probably have to buy land at a high price; and there appears to have been great mismanagement, from the accounts I hear.  Another six months like the last and I will be a ruined man.  It is very hard that one cannot take a short holiday without suffering so grievously for it.  What were your accounts, Phillips; I think you said they were rather unsatisfactory?”

“Not very good, certainly; but not so bad as that comes to.  You will look to Wiriwilta a little when you return, and send me your opinion.  I had better entrust you with full powers to act for me, for I should prefer you as my attorney to Grant.”

“I hope he will not be offended at the transfer,” said Brandon.

“Oh!  I think not; he took it very reluctantly, for he said his own affairs were enough for him.”

“And perhaps a little more than enough,” said Brandon, with a smile.  “In that case I will be very glad to do all in my power for you.”

“I have no wish to return to Australia,” said Mr. Phillips, “if I can possibly afford to live here.  With a family like mine, England offers so many advantages.  In fact, there is only one place in the world worth living in, and that is London.”

“Very true, if you have enough to live on,” said Brandon, shrugging his shoulders.  “I must go now to work as hard as ever to get things set to rights again, and perhaps in another dozen of years, when I am feeble, old, and grey, I may return and spend the poor remnant of my days in this delightful centre of civilization.  But with me, fortunately, there are only the two alternatives, either London or the bush of Australia—­there is no middle course of life desirable.  If I cannot attain the one, I must make the best of the other.”

Harriett Phillips listened to all this, and believed that matters were much worse with Brandon than they really were.  She had no fancy for a twelve years’ banishment from England, nor for a rough life in the bush.  Mr. Brandon had been represented to her as a thriving settler who had made money.  She saw the very comfortable style in which her brother lived, and she had no objection to such an establishment for herself; but she was not so particularly fond of Mr. Brandon as to accept for his sake a life so very different and so very much inferior.  She felt that she had been deceived, and she did not like being deceived, or mistaken, and she still less liked to make mistakes; and instead of blaming herself, she was angry with everyone else—­her brother, her sister-in-law, Brandon himself—­for leading her to believe that his circumstances were so much better than they were.  Of course, he would ask her—­he could not help doing so; but as to accepting him—­that was quite a different question.