Explore "Plain Living" by Rolf Boldrewood on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Before the Windāhgil party returned on the following day a council of war was held, at the conclusion of which the Colonel's face assumed a very different expression from that which it habitually wore. The four men met in his study, where the accounts, assets, and liabilities were laid before the financial authority, who scanned them with keen and practised eye.
After what appeared to the others, and especially to Willoughby and his father, an astonishingly short examination, he raised his head and asked these pertinent questions: "I see your next bill, £12,437 14_s._ 10_d._, falls due in March," he said. "After that, there is nothing more to be met but station expenses for another year, against which there will, of course, be the wool clip. You have 54,786 sheep, more or less, on the run. Is that so?"