Nor was the goldfield, now so populous, and with a reputation which had been bruited over the Anglo-Saxon world, deficient in what was known as ‘society people.’ Not to mention the Honourable Mr. This and Lord John That, who had taken up their abode there—there were dozens of scions of well-known families from the eastern colonies, who had not only come to take a hand in the game of Golden Hazard, here played for such alarming stakes—but who had brought their wives.
These ladies, who had heard of Mrs. Banneret, and sympathised with her in her husband’s dangerous illness, ‘called upon her,’ as the conventional phrase runs, which visits had, of course, to be returned. So that she found herself soon provided with a large and congenial visiting-list.
‘Really, I quite begin to like this place,’ she said to her husband one day, when they were driving home in the cool of the evening from a centre a few miles distant from Pilot Mount, where they had heard of the presence of an old friend; ‘and what a nice pony this is—quite a pleasure to drive her. The roads are so good too. Very different country from poor old Barrawong, with its box forests, and our good, clean, dear bungalow, with the old, old garden, and the dear river. Fancy a river here! The young people get to like it, I suppose—though this cemetery has a list of young—ah! such young inmates, I can’t bear to think of it. Sons and brothers, wives and husbands who will never go back! It is too dreadful.’
‘You must endeavour _not_ to think of it, dear,’ he said softly. ‘You will be able to take _me_ back, that is one comfort. And as the mine is doing so well—better than well—phenomenally, I think—mind you—only think—we may be able to go east, as they say here, by the mail steamer after the next. And if the “Last Chance” keeps up its present, or probable output—we shall not return, but leave the working of it, and all business that hangs thereby, to our partners and the other shareholders.’
‘Oh, what a joy that will be!’ she exclaimed, clasping her hands—which, as she held the whip in one of them, caused the pony mare to make a rush. For a hundred yards or so the pony refused to be stopped, but there were neither trees nor stumps on the road, so the hotel was safely reached. The mail letters had just come in, and from these it was learned that the children were well and matters generally all that could be wished. Things being in this blissful and satisfactory state, Mr. Banneret and his wife quitted Pilot Mount, the latter in a very different state of mind from that in which she had reached it. As for her stay at the field—she thought she should look back to it (after, of course, her husband’s recovery was assured) as really a most interesting and pleasant experience. Everything was so fresh and new, even to her who had been so many years a resident on goldfields. The people were, many of them, lately from Britain, America, or the Continent of Europe: all sorts of young men unattached, who had never seen Australia before, many of them of good, even aristocratic families, not occupied in any profession, eager and anxious to have their share of the treasure which Dame Nature was distributing with lavish hand; men from old colonial families, who brought their wives with them, or sent for them after they had secured an investment likely to be permanent. These were the most solid and influential components of the hastily gathered and yet firmly welded framework of society.