The air was heavy with scent. All round the great quadrangle of the
house acacia trees were in bloom, and the bees were working busily
among the mignonette and roses in front of the office door.
Hugh Gordon was a lithe, wiry young Australian with intensely
sunburnt face and hands, and a drooping black moustache; a man with
a healthy, breezy outdoor appearance, but the face of an artist,
a dreamer, and a thinker, rather than that of a practical man. His
brother Charlie and he, though very much alike in face, were quite
different types of manhood. Charlie, from his earliest school-days,
had never read a book except under compulsion, had never stayed
indoors when he could possibly get out, had never obeyed an unwelcome
order when by force or fraud he could avoid doing so, and had never
written a letter in his life when a telegram would do. He took the
world as it came, having no particular amount of imagination, and
never worried himself. Hugh, on the other hand, was inclined to
meet trouble half-way, and to make troubles where none existed,
which is the worst misfortune that a man can be afflicted with.
Hugh walked to the door and gazed out over the garden and homestead,
down the long stretch of green paddocks where fat cattle were
standing under the trees, too well fed to bother themselves with
looking for grass.
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