hanging from one of the branches.

'That's the bunya-bunya, and the nuts are splendid roasted in the
ashes--if ever that one gets properly ripe--it has to be yellow, you
know--I'll ask Joan Gildea to let me roast it for you. Only it wouldn't be
the same thing at all as when it's done in a fire of gum logs, the nuts
covered with red ashes, and then peeled and washed down with quartpot
tea. . . .'

'Quartpot tea! What a lot you'll have to show me if--if I ever come to
your station in the Back-Blocks.'

'Different from your London Life, eh? . . . Your balls and dinners and
big shows and coaching meets in Hyde Park, and all the rest of the
flummery! Different, too, from your kid-glove fox-hunts over grass
fields and trimmed hedges and puddles of ditches--the sort of thing
you've been accustomed to, Lady Bridget, when you've gone out from your
castle for a sporting spree!'

'A sporting spree!' She laughed with a child's merriment, and he joined
in the laugh, 'It's clear to me, Mr McKeith, that you've never hunted
in Ireland. And how did you know, by the way, that I'd lived in a
castle?'

'I was led to believe that a good many of your kind owned historic
castles which your forefathers had won and defended with the sword,' he
answered, a little embarrassed.

'That's true enough. . . . But if you could see Castle Gaverick! My old
Aunt is always talking of restoring it, but she never will, and if my