I didn't stop, because he was lacing into everybody with a cushion, and the local loafers seemed to like it." "What a joke!" cried Sybil Venables.
"There is no accounting for taste," remarked her sapient sister.
"And he was belaboring them with a cushion, did you say ?" added Rachel, with the slightest emphasis upon the noun.
"Well, it looked like one to me," replied Langholm, "but, on second thoughts, it was more like a bolster in shape; and now I know what it was! It has just dawned on me.

It looked like a bolster done up in a blanket; but it was the swag that the tramps carry in Australia, with all their earthly goods rolled up in their bedding; and the fellow was an Australian swagsman, that's what he was!" "Swagman," corrected Rachel, instinctively.

"And pray what color was the blanket ?" she made haste to add.
"Faded blue." And, again from sheer force of instinct, Rachel gave a nod.
"Were you ever out there, Mrs.Steel ?" inquired Langholm, carelessly.

"I never was, but the sort of thing has been done to death in books, and I only wonder I didn't recognize it at once.

Well, it was the last type one thought to meet with in broad daylight on an English country road!" Had Langholm realized that he had put a question which he had no business to put?
Had he convicted himself of a direct though unpremeditated attempt to probe the mystery of his hostess's antecedents, and were his subsequent observations designed to unsay that question in effect?
If so, there was no such delicacy in the elder Miss Venables, who became quite animated at the sudden change in Rachel's face, and at her own perception of the cause.
"Have you been to Australia, Mrs.Steel ?" repeated Vera, looking Rachel full in the eyes; and she added slyly, "I believe you have!" There was a moment's pause, and then a crisp step rang upon the marble, as Mr.Steel emerged from his study.
"Australia, my dear Miss Venables," said he, "is the one country that neither my wife nor I have ever visited in our lives, and the last one that either of us has the least curiosity to see." And he took his seat among them with a smile..