After this conversation, Ernest was put under the immediate orders of the overseer, Mr. Doubletides, who speedily made it apparent to him that bush life at a large station did not entirely consist of galloping about like Bedouin Arabs and reposing under palm or other trees of grateful shade. Galloping about there was, doubtless; but often the rides were long, weary, and unexciting, with absolutely no shade to speak of, while so continuous was the routine of carrying rations, driving sheep, bringing in working bullocks, carting water to out-stations, and generally performing no inconsiderable amount of hardish manual labour, that Mr. Neuchamp at times felt inclined to adopt the same distrustful view of it all which Mr. Weller took of the alphabet—‘Whether indeed it was worth going through so much to learn so little.’ In any riding that might be ordered, Mr. Neuchamp fared sumptuously compared with the other cadets, who, confined to the ordinary station-hacks, were constantly complaining of their roughness, insecurity, or generally unamiable qualities. Osmund, now quiet, well fed, and tended in the Garrandilla stables, to use Jack Windsor’s expression, ‘went like a bird,’ and daily demonstrated the soundness of that gentleman’s choice and opinion. Charley Banks, the Australian youngster, admired Osmund in secret very much, and at length offered Ernest five pounds to boot, if he would ‘swop,’ or exchange him for a chestnut mare which he, Charley, had bought out of the neighbouring pound. ‘She’s quite good enough for this work, Neuchamp,’ he remarked, ‘and you might as well have the fiver in your pocket as be wearing out your colt’s legs for old Doubletides here. Jedwood will see you far enough before he gives you another one in his place, if you screw him doing his work.’ ‘And why would he sell or swop him at all, ye little horse-racing divil, that wants to be making a blackleg of yourself at the township races? He’s the only horse fit to carry a gentleman I’ve seen this year past, and the very moral of a horse the whipper-in of the Barrington hounds rode.’ ‘You be blowed,’ retorted the son of the soil; ‘I don’t believe you rode much to hounds in Ireland or anywhere else, or else you would stick on better.’ ‘Stick on!’ shouted the Milesian. ‘I can ride with any cornstalk that ever sat in a thing with a pillow on each flap, that you call a saddle. Sure ye’d be laughed out of any hunting-field in Britain if ye took one of them things there.’ ‘Well, we can stick to ’em when we are there,’ sarcastically observed Mr. Banks; ‘I’ll bet you the fiver I was going to give Neuchamp, you don’t sit for ten minutes on that chestnut colt Jack Windsor’s coming up here with now, and he’s ridden him, now it’s the _third_ day.’ Charley Banks emphasised the last number of the colt’s daily experiences of man, as if no one but an elderly capitalist, with gout or asthma, could possibly decline so childishly safe a mount.