They went back to Sydney on the Thursday, for two days, to pack up and return to Coo-ee. All the time, they could hear the sea. It seemed strange that they felt the sea so far away, in Sydney. In Sydney itself, there is no sea. It might be Birmingham. Even in Mullimbimby, a queer raw little place, when Somers lifted his head and looked down Main Street and saw, a mile away, the high level of the solid sea, it was almost a shock to him. Half a mile inland, the influence of the sea has disappeared, and the land-sense is so heavy, buried, that it is hard to believe that the dull rumble in the air is the ocean. It sounds like a coal-mine or something. “You’ll let Mr Somers and me have a little chat to ourselves, Mrs Somers, won’t you?” said Jack, appearing after tea. “Willingly. I assure you _I_ don’t want to be bothered with your important affairs,” said Harriet. None the less she went over rather resentfully to Victoria, turned out of her own house. It wasn’t that she wanted to listen. She would really have hated to attend to all their high-and-mighty revolution stuff. She didn’t believe in revolutions--they were _vieux jeu_, out of date. “Well,” said Jack, settling down in a wooden arm-chair and starting his pipe. “You’ve thought it over, have you?” “Over and over,” laughed Somers. “I knew you would.” He sucked his pipe and thought for a time. “I’ve had a long talk with Kangaroo about you to-day,” he said. “Who’s Kangaroo?” “He’s the First,” replied Jack slowly. And again there was silence. Somers kept himself well in hand, and said nothing. “A lawyer--well up--I knew him in the army, though. He was one of my lieutenants.” Still Somers waited, without speaking. “He’d like to see you. Should you care to have lunch with him and me in town to-morrow?” “Have you told him you’ve talked to me?” “Oh yes--told him before I did it. He knows your writings--read all you’ve written, apparently. He’d heard about you too from a chap on the Naldera. That’s the boat you came by, isn’t it?” “Yes,” said Somers. “Yes,” echoed Jack. “He was all over me when I mentioned your name. You’d like Kangaroo. He’s a great chap.” “What’s his name?” “Cooley--Ben--Benjamin Cooley.” “They like him on the _Bulletin_, don’t they? Didn’t I see something about Ben Cooley and his straight talk?” “Yes. Oh, he can talk straight enough--and crooked enough as well, if it comes to that. You’ll come to lunch then? We lunch in his chambers.” Somers agreed. Jack was silent, as if he had not much more to say. After a while he added reflectively: “Yes, I’m glad to have brought you and Kangaroo together.” “Why do they call him Kangaroo?” “Looks like one.” Again there was a silence, each man thinking his own thoughts. “You and Kangaroo will catch on like wax, as far as ideas go,” Jack prognosticated. “But he’s an unfeeling beggar, really. And that’s where you _won’t_ cotton on to him. That’s where _I_ come in.” He looked at Somers with a faint smile.