“I know, I know! I know you of old, my dear. Yet I can't talk, because I am as bad as you are; only I should like to see you reading something better than the Family Cherub.” There were better things in the little room adjoining, where behind the shooting lumber was some motley reading, on two long sagging shelves; but that room was known as the gun-room, and half those books were hidden away behind powder-canisters, cartridge-cases, and the like, while all were deep in dust. “You read it yourself, father,” said Arabella as she turned over a leaf of her Family Cherub. “I read it myself. More shame for me! But then I've read all them books in the little gun-room, and that's what I should like to see you reading now and then. Now why have you got yon door shut, Arabella, and who's that whistling in there?” “It's our John William,” Miss Teesdale said; and even as she spoke the door in question was thrown open by a stalwart fellow in a Crimean shirt, with the sleeves rolled up from arms as brown and hard-looking as mellow oak. He had a breech-loader in one hand and a greasy rag in the other. “Holloa, father!” cried he, boisterously. “Well, John William, what are you doing?” “Cleaning my gun. What have you been doing, that's more like it? What took you trapesing into Melbourne the moment I got my back turned this morning?” “Why, hasn't your mother told you?” “Haven't seen her since I came in.” “Well, but Arabella——” “Arabella! I'm full up of Arabella,” said John William contemptuously; but the girl was still too deep in the Family Cherub to heed him. “There's no getting a word out of Arabella when she's on the read; so what's it all about, father?” “I'll tell you; but you'd better shut yon window, John William, or I don't know what your mother 'll say when she comes in and finds the place full o' flies.” It was the gun-room window that broke the law of no fresh air, causing Mr. Teesdale uneasiness until John William shut it with a grumble; for in this homestead the mistress was law-maker, and indeed master, with man-servant and maid-servant, husband and daughter, and a particularly headstrong son, after her own heart, all under her thumb together. “Now then, father, what was it took you into Melbourne all of a sudden like that?” “A letter by the English mail, from my old friend Mr. Oliver.” “Never heard tell of him,” said John William, making spectacles of his burnished bores, and looking through them into the sunlight. Already he had lost interest. Mr. Teesdale was also occupied, having taken from his pocket a very large red cotton handkerchief, with which he was wiping alternately the dust from his tall hat and the perspiration from the forehead whereon the hat had left a fiery rim. Now, however, he nodded his bald head and clicked his lips, as one who gives another up.