They all laughed at this, and Mr. Middleton affected to reprove his merry daughter for her sally, but the end of it was that Ernest received a very cordial invitation to visit his old acquaintances at their station, distant about twenty miles, and mentally resolved to take an early opportunity of availing himself of it. The society of young ladies had been entirely out of his line since he had parted with Antonia Frankston, on the verandah at Morahmee. The effect was agreeable in proportion to the period of compulsory withdrawal from such pleasures and recreations. Truth to tell, he was commencing to weary somewhat of the eternal, never-ending merino drill. He could understand a lad of seventeen or eighteen, like Charley Banks, spending two or three years profitably enough in the Garrandilla grind, and being better so employed than anywhere else. But he, Ernest Neuchamp, was a man whose years and months were of somewhat more value in the world than those of a raw lad. He thought, too, that he knew about as much of the not very abstruse and recondite lore necessary for the average management of a station as he was likely to acquire in another year, or any greater length of time. He resolved that, after shearing, he would state his case fully to Mr. Frankston, and secure, if possible, that paternal elder’s consent to his purchasing a station of his own with his own money. From time to time at long intervals, whenever by no possibility could any excuse be found for working among the sheep, would Mr. Doubletides summon him, the other youngsters, and any unoccupied individuals that were handy, and crossing the river, proceed to ‘regulate the cattle a bit,’ as he expressed it. Jack Windsor being a first-class stockman, and handy with the roping-pole, was always invited to join the party. Then they would have a week’s mustering, branding, drafting, weaning, fat cattle collecting, what not—and then every one would come back much impressed with the heroism of the whole expedition, and the cattle would be left to their own devices for three or four months longer. These muster parties were extremely congenial to Mr. Neuchamp’s tastes and tendencies. He found the country, which was wild and hilly in places, more interesting than the uniform, monotonous, but profitable campaign, where roamed the carefully-tended merino. There were Alpine gorges, tiny streamlets, masses of foliage, botanical treasures, and above all, a mode of life more irregular, more volitional, than the daily mechanical regularity with which the machinery of the ‘merino-mill,’ as Barrington profanely called it, revolved diurnally at Garrandilla proper.