And, I say, go to a chemist and get some cough stuff for that churchyarder of yours -- we've got no use for it just now, and it makes me sentimental. I'll give you a cough when you want one.
Bring me a syphon of soda, some fruit, and a tract."
"A what?"
"A tract. Go on. Start your boots."
While Smith was gone, Steelman paced the room with a strange, worried, haunted expression. He divided the gold that was left -- (Smith had taken four pounds) -- and put ten sovereigns in a pile on the extreme corner of the table. Then he walked up and down, up and down the room, arms tightly folded, and forehead knitted painfully, pausing abruptly now and then by the table to stare at the gold, until he heard Smith's step. Then his face cleared; he sat down and counted flies.
Smith was undoing and inspecting the parcels, having placed the syphon and fruit on the table. Behind his back Steelman hurriedly opened a leather pocketbook and glanced at the portrait of a woman and child and at the date of a post-office order receipt.
"Smith," said Steelman, "we're two honest, ignorant, green coves; hard-working chaps from the bush."
"Yes."
"It doesn't matter whether we are or not -- we are as far as the world is concerned. Now we've grafted like bullocks, in heat and wet, for six months, and made a hundred and fifty, and come down to have a bit of a holiday before going back to bullock for another six months or a year. Isn't that so, Smith?"
"Yes."
"You could take your oath on it?"
"Yes."
"Well, it doesn't matter if it is so or not -- it IS so, so far as the world is concerned. Now we've paid our way straight.
We've always been pretty straight anyway, even if we are a pair of vagabonds, and I don't half like this new business; but it had to be done.
If I hadn't taken down that sharper you'd have lost confidence in me and wouldn't have been able to mask your feelings, and I'd have had to stoush you. We're two hard-working, innocent bushies, down for an innocent spree, and we run against a cold-blooded professional sharper, a paltry sneak and a coward, who's got neither the brains nor the pluck to work in the station of life he togs himself for. He tries to do us out of our hard-earned little hundred and fifty -- no matter whether we had it or not -- and I'm obliged to take him down.
Serve him right for a crawler. You haven't the least idea what I'm driving at, Smith, and that's the best of it.
I've driven a nail of my life home, and no pincers ever made will get it out."
"Why, Steely, what's the matter with you?"
Steelman rose, took up the pile of ten sovereigns, and placed it neatly on top of the rest.
"Put the stuff away, Smith."
After breakfast next morning, Gentleman Sharper hung round a bit, and then suggested a stroll. But Steelman thought the weather looked too bad, so they went on the balcony for a smoke. They talked of the weather, wrecks, and things, Steelman leaning with his elbows on the balcony rail, and Sharper sociably and confidently in the same position close beside him.
But the professional was evidently growing uneasy in his mind; his side of the conversation grew awkward and disjointed, and he made the blunder of drifting into an embarrassing silence before coming to the point. He took one elbow from the rail, and said, with a bungling attempt at carelessness which was made more transparent by the awkward pause before it:
"Ah, well, I must see to my correspondence. By the way, when could you make it convenient to let me have that hundred?
The shares are starting up the last rise now, and we've got no time to lose if we want to double it."
Steelman turned his face to him and winked once -- a very hard, tight, cold wink -- a wink in which there was no humour: such a wink as Steelman had once winked at a half-drunken bully who was going to have a lark with Smith.
The sharper was one of those men who pull themselves together in a bad cause, as they stagger from the blow. But he wanted to think this time.
Later on he approached Steelman quietly and proposed partnership.
But Steelman gave him to understand (as between themselves) that he wasn't taking on any pupils just then.
