Explore "Gathered In" by Catherine Helen Spence on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In a billiard-room in a somewhat shady neighbourhood, a middle-aged, shabby-looking man started at the name of Oswald, carelessly uttered by his companion, and watched the pair keenly. Hugh Carmichael, for it was he who had drifted into a low stratum of society in New South Wales, wondered if this could be the son of that Isabel Oswald whose just rights he had endeavoured to obtain without success. He asked casually where the young man hailed from, and was informed that he was the son of a rich squatter in Victoria now, and somewhat famous all over Australia--so he subsided into comparative indifference--this could not be his Oswald.
The room was filled with the habitués of the place, all evidently of much lower position than the strangers, but all full of the idea that they could easily win money from them, which in the case of Ellerton at least was all but impossible. It may seem a very chimerical idea for poor Jim Oswald to imagine that he could get the better in any way of a man so astute and so unscrupulous as his companion, and he was a weak man to hope to influence others to work for him, but still the idea had taken such hold on his mind that the longer success was delayed the more vehemently he desired it.