Kingsley's descriptions, like all else that he wrote of the country, breathe an unmistakable personal enjoyment. They are the natural expression of a happy disposition, just as is the boyish fun with which he surrounds the love-making of his characters. 'Halbert kicked Jim's shins under the table, and whispered: "You've lost your money, old fellow!"' when Sam Buckley, flushed and happy, rejoined his friends in the sitting-room at Garoopna, after proposing to Alice in the garden. Jim Brentwood had peevishly bet his friend that the lovers would go on shilly-shallying half their lives; but Halbert, with keener vision, had foreseen the very hour of their betrothal, and made a bet of five pounds on the event. More comical still is the spectacle of Hamlyn ducking under the bedclothes to escape the boot that is about to be flung at him, for laughingly discrediting the story of which his bosom-friend Stockbridge has tragically unburdened himself concerning the evaporation of his love for Mary Hawker.
Whether in recording the actions and dialogue of his characters, or in describing scenery and the habits of the birds and animals which figure so often in his first novel, Kingsley always reflected some of his own happiness. It is not wit nor subtle humour, but a combination of pure mirth with the enthusiasm of warm friendship, that maintains one's interest in the simple life of the new Drumston. There is an abundance of farcical fun and playfulness which force laughter, and never approach an unkindness. The men avoid being smart at each other's expense; and if they cannot claim to be clever or heroic, they are at least good fellows, any one of whom might serve as a model of manliness.
Kingsley's knowledge of household pets was of the kind exhibited by persons who have spent some period of their lives in loneliness, with only the companionship of dumb creatures. He was an acute observer of their peculiarities, with the noting of which he combined a whimsical exaggeration. The account of the menagerie which Sam Buckley found at Garoopna on the occasion of his memorable first meeting with Alice Brentwood is almost unique in Australian literature.
Buckley's ride to rescue his sweetheart from the bushrangers is one of the most moving and dramatic incidents in the book, and a good specimen of Kingsley's graphic narrative style. A band of the outlaws who were the terror of pioneer colonists fifty years ago have risen in the district, and, after committing outrages at one station, are reported to be riding on to another twenty miles distant. At the latter, Captain Brentwood's home, Alice happens to be alone. When the terrible news comes to her young lover, he is at Baroona, which by the shortest road is ten miles from Brentwood's. What start have the bushrangers had, and will they arrive before him?
