"I haven't seen you for an age," said Dawn with unusual graciousness.

"Are you sure you wanted to see me?" he inquired, with an amorous look.

Dawn used her bewitching eyes of blue in a laughing glance.

"You know you only have to give me the wink and you'll see me as often as you want," straightforwardly confessed "Dora"; but Dawn having encouraged him to a certain distance, had a mind to bring him no nearer.

"I don't care if I never saw you again," she said bluntly, "but grandma likes yarning with you, that's why I inquired."

"Dora" looked very red in the face indeed.

"How's Miss Cowper?" mercilessly pursued Dawn, going to the point about which she was curious, as is characteristic of swains and maids of her degree. "I hope she's well."

"So do I," said Eweword.

"You used to ask after her health about twice a-day. I thought you would be taking her to Lucerne Farm to relieve your anxiety;" and in response to this "Dora" sealed his fate, as far as my feeling any compunction whether he singed his wings or not in the light of Dawn's bright candle, for he said with a touch of bravado—

"Oh, I was only pulling her leg."

To do the man justice he did not seem down to the full unmanliness of this statement; it appeared more one of those nasty and idle remarks to which all are prone when in a tight corner, and speaking on the spur of the moment.

"Oh, was that all!" said Dawn mockingly. "It was very nice of you. Are you always so kind and thoughtful?"

"I'm thinking of clearing out to Sydney in a day or two, I've spent enough time loafing. The only thing that has kept me here so long is that I wanted to hear how Les. got on in his maiden speech. We're not much to each other, but when a fellow has no one belonging to him he feels a claim on the most distant connection," said Ernest on the other side of me. His interest in Leslie Walker's maiden speech had been developed as suddenly as his opinion that he had spent enough time in a boat on the river Noonoon.

The connection he mentioned between himself and the candidate about to speak was that old Walker, whose only son the latter was, had married a widow with one son, by name Ernest Breslaw. Both these parents were now dead, leaving the step-brothers as their only offspring. The lads had been reared together, and though of utterly different tastes and callings, a mutual regard existed between them. Walker had passed his examinations at the bar, and Breslaw had been trained to electrical engineering, but both being wealthy, neither followed their professions except in a nominal way. Walker had put in his time in society, motoring, flirting, travelling, dabbling in the arts, and building a fine town mansion, while Ernest had spent all his time in athletic training, with the result that Walker had fallen a prize in the marriage arena, while Ernest was yet in full possession of his bachelorhood.

Any further conversation was out of the question, as the candidate—a smart, clean-shaven man with clearly cut features—now appeared, and announced himself by removing his new straw "decker," and calling out—

"Ladies and gentlemen, before we begin I would like to follow the democratic principle of asking you to choose a chairman from among yourselves."

"We propose Mr Oscar Lawyer!" called several voices, naming a popular townsman, and this being seconded, the candidate and the people's chairman, two very gentlemanly-looking men for the hustings, ascended to the stage side by side.

The chairman took up a position behind a little red table supporting a water-bottle and smudgy tumbler, while Leslie Walker sat on another chair at the end of it.

Many members of parliament, having risen to their position from coal-heaving or hotel-keeping, when going on the war-path a second time, take great pains to get themselves up in accordance with their idea of the dignity of their office. Many old fellows, roaring "Gimme your votes, I'm the only bloke to save the country and see you git yer rights," dress this modest role in a long-tailed satin-faced frock-coat, a good thing in the trouser line, and a stylish button-hole; but Leslie Walker, one of the champagne set, had made equally palpable efforts to dress himself down to his present debut.

For sure! his suit, which comprised an alpaca coat with a crumpled tail, must have been the shabbiest he had, while the glistening new white sailor hat had probably been procured at the last moment in the vain imagination that, dress as he would, it was not evident at a first glance that he had had the bread-and-butter problem solved for him by a provident parent before his birth, and that he had lived what is designated the cultured life, far and autocratically above sympathy with the vulgar and despised herds, upon whose sweat his class build the pretty villas fronting the harbour, charge haughtily along the roads in automobiles, and sail the graceful yachts on the idyllic waters of Port Jackson.

"By Jove! Les. has different ambitions from mine," said Ernest. "I'd rather have to stand up to a mill with the champion pug. than face what he's on for to-night. Doesn't he look a case in that get up? Supposing he gets in, what the devil good will it do then, and it takes such crawling to get into parliament nowadays. There are too many at the game. I could never face the way one has to flatter some of these old creatures for their vote. I'd rather plug them under the jaw."

Mr Oscar Lawyer having introduced the speaker, he came forward, and after explaining it was his first appearance in politics, charmingly proceeded, "I hope I shall not bore you with my remarks as I endeavour to outline the various planks in the platform of the party to which I have the honour to belong."

Quite superfluous for him to explain that he was a new chum in politics. Only a fledgling from a Brussels or Axminster carpeted reception-room would stand on the hustings and publish a fear that he might be boring his audience. One familiar with the trade of electioneering, as it has always been conducted by men, would strut and shout and brag, never for a moment worrying whether or not he came anywhere near the truth or feeling the slightest qualm, though he deafened his hearers with his trumpeting or bored them to complete extinction, and would refuse to be silenced even by "eggs of great antiquity."

"Les. ought to stick to society," observed his step-brother; "flipping around a drawing-room and making all the girls think they were equally in the running was more in his line."

"He's a nice, clean, good-looking young fellow at any rate, and doesn't look as if he gorged himself—hasn't that red-faced, stuffed look," said Dawn. "If I had a vote I'd give it to him just for that, as I'm sick of these red-nosed old members of parliament with corporations."

"He's the real lah-de-dah Johnny, isn't he?" laughed "Dora" Eweword.

"Don't you say he's any relation of mine," said Ernest. "It would give me away, and he thinks I'm in Melbourne. I told every one that's where I was bound. I hope he won't catch sight of me."

There was little fear of this; one has to be accustomed to facing a crowd before they can distinguish faces.

After the meeting, which dispersed early, Ernest and I hurried out into the galvanised iron-walled yard, in which those coming from a distance put their horses and vehicles.

Having noted the disconsolate manner in which a pair of dark eyes below a thatch of generous hue surreptitiously glanced towards a tormentatious maiden with ribbons of blue matching her eyes and fluttering on her bosom, I thought it time to come to his rescue.

"If you would care to talk to your friend, he can drive you home while I walk with 'Dora'; he says he has something to say to me," said Dawn in an aside.

"Are you sure you want to hear it?" I asked.

"How could I tell until I hear it?"

"That is not a fair answer, Dawn."

"Well, it wasn't a fair question," she pouted.

"Very well, I will not press you more, but you'll tell me of it after, will you not?"

"Well, what would you like me to do?" she asked.

"Oh, I'd like you to be naughty. Mr Dora's complacence inspires me to inveigle him into having to drive me home while you walk with some one else."

"Very well, anything for fun," she responded with dancing eyes; and as Ernest had the horse in I got into the sulky and said—

"There is room for three here, Mr Eweword, and we would be glad of you to put the horse out when we get home."

He took the reins and a seat, and moved aside to make room for the loitering Dawn, but she said—

"No, I'll walk; I must keep Carry company, and she doesn't want to come just yet."

"Drive on," I commanded, and there was nothing for the entrapped "Dora" to do but obey.

I saw Carry go on with another escort. "Will you permit me to see you to your gate?" I heard Ernest saying as we went, and Dawn asserting that it was unnecessary.

It was a beautiful starry night, with a prospect of a slight frost, as we turned down the tree-lined streets of the friendly old town, whose folk on their homeward way dawdled in knots to discuss the interposition of the women's vote.

"Now the women will do strokes," said one.

"The men have things in such a jolly muddle it will take a long time to improve them," another retorted.

"The women will make bloomin' fools of themselves!"

"Couldn't be worse than the men!"

"The women'll all go for this chap because he's good-looking."

"Just as good a reason as going for another because he shouted grog for you," and similar remarks, drifted to my ears, but "Dora's" mind did not seem to be running on politics.

"Who was that red-headed fellow sitting the other side of you?" he inquired.

"Which one?"

"A short block of a fellow with a clean face."

"Oh, he's a man I know."

"Pretty cool of us leaving Dawn. The old dame won't like it."

"She won't mind, considering Dawn has about the most reliable escort procurable."

"I suppose it's all right if you know him, but to me he looked like a bagman or bike-rider or something in the spieler line."

"Oh no," and pulling my boa about me I smiled to think of the chagrin of Dora. He was so beautifully transparent too, but to do him justice did not seem to resent the scurvy trick I had played him, as soon his equanimity was restored, and we laboured cheerfully but unavailingly to promote a conversation.

"Do you really like farming—take a pleasure in it?" I inquired.

"When I'm knocking a decent amount of money out of it I do. There's not much fun in anything when it doesn't pay."

"Quite true."

"There might be a frost to-night, but they're nothing here—always disappear as soon as the sun is up. Great Scott! aren't these roads? The council want stuffing in the Noonoon. It would be an all right place only for the roads."

This brought us to Clay's gate, and no further conversational effort was necessary. I lingered outside till Eweword had disposed of the pony and trap, and by that time Ernest and Dawn, bearing evidence of quick walking, appeared, and we went into grandma and Uncle Jake in a body.

"The women are going to form a committee to work for Mr Walker if he's selected," announced Dawn, "and I want to join it, grandma. I am not old enough to vote, but I'd like to work for Mr Walker. He looks worth a vote. He's nice and thin, and speaks beautifully without shouting and roaring,—not like these old beer-swipers who buy their votes with drink."

"He is a decent-looking fellow," said Eweword.

"Oh, well, he'll go in then; that's all the women will care about," said Uncle Jake in one of his half-audible sneers.

"Well," contended Dawn, "men always sneer at women for doing in a small degree what men do fifty times worse. If a pretty barmaid comes to town all the men are after her like bees, and if a pretty woman stood for parliament the men would go off their heads about her, and yet they get their hair off terribly if a woman happens to prefer a nice gentlemanly man to a big, old, fat beer-barrel, with his teeth black from tobacco and his neck gouging over his collar from eating too much. Can I join the committee, grandma?"

"If it's proper, and he's my man, you can, an' work instead of me, but I must hear them both first."

"If Walker could get you to make a speech for him, we'd all vote for him in a body," laughed Eweword; but Dawn replied—

"Oh, you, I suppose you say that to every girl."

Eweword sizzled in his blushes, while Ernest's face slightly cleared at this rebuff dealt out to another.

Grandma brought in the coffee and grumbled to Dawn about Carry's absence.

"That Larry Witcom ain't no monk, and while a girl is in my house I feel I ought to look after her. I believe in every one having liberty, but there's reason in everythink."

The girl did not appear till after the young men had gone and Dawn and I had withdrawn, but we heard grandma's remonstrance.

"That feller, I told you straight, was took up about a affair in a divorce case, an' it would be as well not to make yourself too cheap to him. I don't say as most men ain't as bad, only they're not caught and bowled out; but w'en they are made a public example of, we have to take notice of it. Marry him if you want—use your own judgment; he'll be the sort of feller who'll always have a good home, and in after years these things is always forgot, and it would be better to be married to a man that had that against him (seein' they're all the same, only they ain't found out) and could keep you comfortable, than one who was supposed to be different an' couldn't keep you. But if you ain't goin' to marry him, don't fool about with him. An' unless he gets to business an' wants marriage at once, don't take too much notice to his soft soap, as you ain't the only girl he's got on the string by a long way."

"He acknowledges about the fault he did in his young days, and he says it's terribly hard that it's always coming against him now," said Carry.

"Well, if a woman does a fault she has to pay for it, hasn't she?—that's the order of things," said grandma.

"But this was when he was young and foolish," continued Carry.

"Yes, the poor child, he was terribly innocent, wasn't he? an' was got hold of by some fierce designing hussy—they always are—and it was all her fault. It always is a woman's fault—only for the women the men would be all angels and flew away long ago," said grandma sarcastically. "They'll give you plenty of that kind of yarn if you listen to 'em; an' if you are built so you can believe it, well an' good, but the facts was always too much of a eye-opener for me," and with that the contention ended.

"Yes, Carry's the terriblest silly about that Larry Witcom," said Dawn; "she swallows all he says. She said to me yesterday, 'He seems to be terribly gone on me.' 'Yes,' I said. 'You keep cool about his goneness. Wait till he gets down on his knees and bellows and roars about his love, and take my tip for it he could forget you then in less than a week.' I've seen men pretending to be mad with love, and the next month married to some one else. Men's love is a thing you want to take with more discount than everything you know. You might be conceited enough to believe them if you went by your own lovers, but you want to look on at other people's love affairs, and see how much is to be depended on there, and measure your own by them, and it will keep your head cool," said this girl, who had the most sensible head I ever saw in conjunction with her degree of beauty.

She had contracted the habit of slipping into my room for a talk before going to bed, and as her bright presence there was a delight to me, I encouraged her in it. The gorgeous kimono was a great attraction; she loved it so that I had given it her after the first night, but did not tell her so, or she would have carried it away to her own room, where I would have been deprived of the pleasure of seeing it nightly enhance the loveliness of her firm white throat and arms.

"How did you and Dora get on together?" she presently inquired.

"Well, you see we didn't elope; how did you and Ernest manage?"

"Well, you see we didn't elope," she laughed.

"No, but you might have arranged such a thing."

"Arranged for such a thing!" she said scornfully. "I'm not in the habit of trucking with other people's belongings."

"What do you mean?"

"It was you who said something about his young lady this afternoon—as far as I can see he doesn't behave much as if he had one."

So it was my chance remark that had run her wheel out of groove during the last few hours!

"Does he not?" I replied. "I think he appears more as though he has a young lady now than he did during my previous knowledge of him."

"Well, I don't know how you see it," she said, as she tore down her pretty hair.

"What!" I ejaculated in feigned consternation. "He has not been making love to you, has he, Dawn? I always had such faith in his manliness."

"Well, he doesn't say anything," said Dawn, with a blush. "But he glares at me in the way men do, and when I mention anything I like or want, he wants to get it for me, and all that sort of business."

"Perhaps he's falling in love unawares. Young men are often stupid, and do not recognise their distemper till it is very ripe. He ought to be removed from danger."

"Well, if I ever had a lover, and he liked another girl better, I'd be pretty sure he hadn't cared for me, and would not want him any more," she said off-handedly.

"But would it not be better to let him go away and be happy with the maid who loves him than to spoil his life by wasting his affection on you, when you only think him a great pug-looking creature that you'd be ashamed to be seen with?"

"Yes, I don't care for him," she said still more off-handedly; "but he doesn't look so queer now I've got used to him. I suppose any one who liked him wouldn't think him such a horror."

"No; I for one think him handsome."

"Handsome?"

"Yes, handsome."

"Well, I'll go to bed after that and think how some people's tastes differ."

"Well, take care you don't think about Ernest."

"Thank you; I don't want the nightmare," she retorted, tossing her head.



THIRTEEN.

VARIOUS EVENTS.

The following day was eventful. To begin with, after Andrew had discharged his early morning duties, he was to appear before his grandma for the execution of the sentence she had passed upon him the night before. I was assisting him to dry the parts of the cream-separator, a task which had become chronic with me, when Carry shouted from the kitchen, where she was putting in her week—

"Your grandma says not to be long; she's waiting for you."

Andrew unburdened his soul to me.

"Lord, ain't I just in for it! I'll hear how me grandma rared me since I was born! I'm dead sick of this born and rared business. It would give a bloke the pip. I didn't make meself born, nor want any one else to do it; there ain't much in bein' alive," he said with that pessimism which, like measles and whooping-cough, is indigenous to extreme youth.

"How could I help being rared? I didn't ask 'em to rare me. I didn't make meself a little baby that couldn't help itself, and they needn't have rared me unless they liked. Goodness knows, I'd have rather died like a little pup before his eyes were opened," he continued so tragically that I took the opportunity of smiling behind his back as he threw out the dish-water.

"Hurry up! your grannie is waiting!" called Carry once more.

"Blow you! you'll have to wait till I'm done," retorted the boy in a tone the reverse of genial.

"People is always chuckin' at their kids how much they owe them. I'm blowed if ever I can see it. I didn't want 'em to have me, and don't see why it should be everlasting threw at me."

It is a wise provision that youth cannot see what it owes the previous generation. This is a chicken that comes back to roost in heavier years.

"I wish I had a grandma like Jack Bray's ma. He nicked over to me w'en I was after the cows, an' Mrs Bray ain't goin' to kick up any row about the oranges. She says she never knew of a boy that didn't go into orchards in their young days, and that his dad did, and people don't think no more of a boy pickin' up a little fruit than they do of pickin' up a stick. Yet grandma will tan the hide off of me. She done it once before, and I was stiff for a week."

"Take a tip from me, Andrew! March into your grandma bravely; she's the best woman I've seen; you ought to be proud to have such a grandma! She's in the right and Mrs Bray's in the wrong. Let her hammer you for all she's worth, and every whack you get feel proud that she's able to give it at her time of life, and I bet when you're a man you'll be telling every one that you had a grandma who was worth owning. When she leaves off tell her that this is the last time she'll ever have to do it for anything like that, and see if you don't feel more a man than you ever did before. Promise me that's what you'll do."

"Is that what you'd do if you was me?" he inquired with surprise.

"That's what you'd do if you were me," I replied with a smile. "Just try that. Never mind if your grandma does go for you hot and strong."

Andrew wiped the table, wrung out his dishcloth in the back-handed manner peculiar to his sex, hung it on a nail behind the door, dried his hands on his trousers, which for once were not "busted up," and with a less rueful expression than he had exhibited for several hours, went forth to meet his grandma.

About ten minutes later he returned blubbering, but it was a sunshiny shower, and I did not despise the lad for his tears, for he had a soft nature, and was quite a child despite his big stature and sixteen years.

"Well?" I inquired, recognising that he was anxious to relate his experience.

"She banged away with the strap of the breechin' till she was winded, and then I said I hoped she'd never have to beat me again for acting the goat in other people's gardens that didn't concern me, an' she didn't beat me no more then, but I had plenty as it was," he said, rubbing his seat and the calves of his legs.

"Well done, stick to that, and be thankful for such a grandma!"

"She ain't a bad old sort when you come to consider," he said with that patronage, also an attribute of extreme youth or unsubdued snobbishness, and when compared, snobbishness and youth have some similar characteristics.

Next item on the programme was Mr Pornsch, whom grandma invited to remain to midday dinner, and the old lady being sufficiently human to denounce a swell far more fiercely behind his back than to his face, in consideration of this one's presence, once more entrusted us to sugar our own puddings, regardless of consequences.

After luncheon she interviewed him about his niece's health. Mr Pornsch seemed really concerned, and said perhaps she needed to be diverted, and that he would see about a further change, which might prove beneficial. He then put up his eyeglass to inspect Dawn's beauty, and ogling her, attempted to engage her in conversation; but the girl didn't seem at all attracted by him or thankful for the favours he brought her in the form of an exquisite box of bonbons and the latest song.

"I don't accept presents, thank you," she said uncompromisingly.

"Do you never make exceptions?"

"Only from people I like very much."

"Well, I trust I may some day be among the exceptions," he said, in a gruesome attempt to be ingratiating; but the girl replied—

"Then you hope for impossibilities."

Somewhat disconcerted though not the least abashed, Mr Pornsch persevered by asking if she ever went to Sydney, and stated the pleasure it would be to him to provide her with tickets for any of the plays; but even this could not overcome her unconquerable horror of the various intemperances suggested by his person, so he had to retreat.

Dawn's grandmother remonstrated with her afterwards.

"You ought to be a little more genteeler, Dawn, and you could refuse presents just as well. Even if he isn't the takin'est old chap, that is not any reason for you to be ungenteel."

"Well, I don't care," replied Dawn, whose exquisitely moulded chin, despite an irresistible dimple, was expressive of determination. "If I was a great old podge and had a blue nose from swilling and gorging, and was fifty if I was a day, and then went goggling after a young fellow of eighteen, he wouldn't be very civil to me, or be lectured if he spoke to me the way I deserved, and I think these old creatures of men ought to be discouraged by all the girls. What's sauce for the goose is the same for the gander."

Mr Pornsch had not long departed when Mrs Bray favoured us with a call, so grandma was spared a pilgrimage to her house. She and Carry exchanged a stiffly formal greeting, but the visitor beamed upon the remainder of us and seated herself in our midst.

"Oh, I say, ain't it a blessed nark to the men us going to have a vote? He! he! Ha! ha! It fairly maddens 'em to see us getting a bit of freedom—makes 'em that wild they don't know how to be sneerin' an' nasty enough. Every one of us will just roll up an' use our power now we've got it,—they've kep' our necks under their heel long enough."

"I wasn't thinkin' of the vote at present," said Grandma Clay. "I was just off to see you about what our noble nibbs have been doin' in that old Gawling's orchard; but I beat Andrew already in case. What did you think of 'em?"

Mrs Bray put back her handsome head, decorated by an extremely fashionable hat, and laughed boisterously.

"Fancy the old toad runnin' 'em down,—gave 'em a bit of a scare, didn't it? Old mongrel, to kick up a fuss over a few paltry oranges! As if we don't all know what boys is; why, there'd be no chance of rarin' them without touchin' nothing, unless you carted them off to the back-blocks where there wasn't no one within reach. I told him what I thought of him. 'How dare you!' says I. 'Bring witnesses of this,' said I."

Grandma Clay arose.

"Well, if that's your idea of rarin' a family, it ain't mine. Why, can't you hear the parson's everlastin' preaching and giving examples how taking a pin has been the start of a feller coming to the gallows; and this is a much worse beginning than a pin! If the only way of rarin' them not to steal was to put 'em where there was no possibility of stealing nothink, a pretty sort of honesty that would be; you might as well say the only way to rare a girl modest was to let her never have a chance of being nothink else. Some people, of course, has different views, but I believe in holding to mine; they've brought me up to this time very well."

"Oh, you are terrible strict; you wouldn't have no peace of your life rarin' boys if you cut things so fine as that. Now w'en women gets the rule it might become the fashion for men to be more proper. Look here, the men are that mad—"

Uncle Jake here interrupted her by appearing for four o'clock tea.

"Well, Mr Sorrel, now the women has come to show you how to do things, there might be something done in the country."

"Nice fools they'll make of themselves," he sneeringly replied.

"They couldn't make no greater fools of themselves than the men has always done,—lying in the gutter an' breakin' their faces," said Mrs Bray.

"Wait till the women go at it, they'll fight like cats," continued Uncle Jake, whose power to annoy depended not so much upon what he said as his way of saying it.

Dawn chipped into the rescue at this point.

"I'm dead sick of that yarn about women fighting. It's a mean lie. They never fight half as much as men; and girls always love each other more, and are more friendly together than men. The only women who fight with their own sex and call them cats are a few nasty things who are trying to please men by helping them to keep women down and make little of them; and the fools! that sort of meanness never pleases any men, only those that are not worth pleasing."

"Well, now that women has the vote they ought to plough, an' drive the trains, and let the men sit down inside," continued Jake. But Mrs Bray descended upon him.

"Yes; an' the men ought to come inside an' sweep, an' sew, and have their health ruined for a man's selfishness, an' be tied to a baby and four or five toddlers from six in the mornin' till ten at night, day in and day out, like the women do. What do you think, Mr Eweword?" she inquired of this individual, who had joined the company and awaited the conclusion of her remarks ere he greeted us.

"I think the women ought to vote if they want to. There's nothing to stop 'em voting and doing their housework as well; and the Lord knows it doesn't matter who they vote for, as all the members are only a pack of 'skytes,' after a good billet for themselves. Think I'll have a go for it to see if it would pay better than farmin'," he said, with his mouth extended in a laugh that redeemed the weakness of this feature by exhibiting the beauty of a perfect set of teeth.

"What about women havin' to keep theirselves in subjection?" persisted Uncle Jake. This subject apparently lay near his heart.

"I always think that means for them to take care of themselves, and not bust over the hard dragging work that men were meant for," said Mrs Bray; "for I've always noticed that any man who puts his wife to man's work never comes to no good in the finish. If a man can't float his own boat, and thinks a woman can keep his and her own end up at the same time, she might as well fold her hands from the start, as the little she can do will never keep things goin' and only pave the way for doctors' bills."

"You might try to argue it, but if you believe the Bible you can see there in every page that women ain't meant only to be under men," said the gallant Jake.

"It ain't a case of not believin' the Bible, it's only that we ain't fools enough to believe all the ways people twists it to suit theirselves; men as talks that way is always the sort would be in a benevolent asylum only for some woman keepin' 'em from it," said grandma, coming to the rescue. "Cowards always drag in the Bible to back theirselves up far more than proper people does; and there's always one thing as strikes me in the Bible, an' that is w'en God was going to send His son down in human form. He considered a woman fit to be His mother, but there wasn't a man livin' fit to be His father. I reckon that's a slap in the face from the Almighty hisself that ought to make men more carefuller when they try to make little of women."

Even Uncle Jake collapsed before this, and Mrs Bray ceased contention and veered her talk to gossip.

"Young Walker has been chose by the Opposition League in Noonoon, an' we're goin' to form a committee at once and work for him. Ada Grosvenor is goin' to form a society for educating women how to vote."

"Ada Grosvenor!" exclaimed grandma. "I thought she would be too much a upholder of the men to be the start of anythink like that."

"I don't see how educating one's self how to vote would be making them a putter down of the men," said Dawn.

"Well, it's much the same thing," said Mrs Bray. "For if a woman educates herself on anything it will show her that a lot of the men want puttin' down—a long way down too. You'll see the men will think it's against 'em, and try to squash her and her society, for they're always frightened if you begin to learn the least thing you will find out how you're bein' imposed upon; but they don't care how much you learn in the direction of wearin' yourself out an' slavin' to save money for them to spend on themselves."

"Oh, come now," laughed "Dora"; "we're not all so bad as that!"

"Not at your time of life w'en you're after the girls and pretendin' you're angels to catch 'em; it's after you've got 'em in your power that things change," said Mrs Bray.

The company was now further enlarged by the arrival of Ernest, soon followed by a young lady I had not previously met—a tall brown-eyed girl, with pleasant determination in every line of her well-cut face, and who proved to be the young lady under discussion—Miss Ada Grosvenor, daughter of the owner of the farm adjoining Bray's and Clay's.

Her errand was to invite Dawn to join the society she was promoting.

She explained it was not for the support of a party, but for the exchange and search of knowledge that should direct electresses to exercise their long-withheld right in a worthy manner. I listened with pleasure to the thoughtful and earnest ideals to be discerned underlying the girl's practically expressed ideas, and delighted in the humorous intelligence flashing from her clear eyes, and was altogether favourably impressed with her as a type of womanhood—one of the best extant.

She conversed with the elder members of the party and Ernest, and this left "Dora" Eweword in charge of Carry and Dawn. His giggle was much in evidence. Between blasts of it he could be heard inviting the girls to a pull on the river, and they presently set off round the corner of Miss Flipp's bedroom leading to the flights of wooden steps down to the boats under the naked willows. The nature of the one swift glance that travelled after them from Ernest's eyes did not escape my observation, so I suggested that he, Miss Grosvenor, and myself should follow a good example, and we did. I knew it would be a relief to him to overtake Eweword, pull past him with ease, and leave him a speck in the distance, as he did. I felt a satisfaction in noting Dawn watch his splendid strokes, and Miss Grosvenor's animated conversation with him and enthusiastically expressed admiration of his rowing. She was not so exacting in the matter of detail as Dawn, and red hair did not prevent her from enjoying the company of a splendid specimen of the opposite sex when she had the rare good fortune of encountering him.

"That's a fine stamp of a girl," he cordially remarked as, having at her request pulled the boat to the edge of the stream, she landed and sprang up the bank for ferns; but not by any inveiglement could I induce him to give an opinion of Dawn, which was propitious of her being his real lady. When we pulled down stream again between the fertile farm-lands spread with occasional orange and lemon groves, beautiful with their great crops of yellowing fruit, we found that the other party were already deserting their craft.

"We had to give it best. Mr Eweword soon got winded. I never saw any one pull a boat so splendidly as you do, Mr Ernest," called the outspoken Carry, who had not acquired the art of paying a compliment to one member of a party without running amok of the feelings of another. Eweword, despite his shapely and imposing bulk, had not developed his athletic possibilities so much as those of the gourmand, and, reddening to the roots of his stubbed hair, he looked the reverse of pleased with the tactless young woman,—an expression usually to be found on the countenance of one or more members of a company following the publication of her opinions.

Miss Grosvenor and Ernest continued to chat with such apparent enjoyment that Dawn said pointedly—

"Pooh! there's no art in pulling a boat; any galoot with a little brute force can do that,"—a remark having the desired effect, for the young Breslaw feigned not to hear, his face rivalled the colour of "Dora's," and his remarks grew absent.

"Oh, I don't know," persisted Carry, "I know plenty of galoots,—they're the only sort of men there are in the Noonoon district, and they can't row for sour apples."

Dawn singled out "Dora" Eweword, and went up the bank with him, leaving the remainder of us together. Miss Grosvenor favoured us with a cordial invitation to partake of the hospitality of her home during the following evening; and delighted with the intelligence and go of the girl, I was pleased to accept. Ernest said he would be delighted to escort me, but Carry said she had her work to do, and had no time to run about to people's places. Miss Grosvenor received this with a merry twinkle in her eye, and said to me—

"Well, Dawn will come to show you the way. It is an uncomfortable path if you don't know it;" and with this she bade good afternoon and ran around the orchard among the square weed and wild quince, across an area abounding in lines of barbed-wire.

Ernest too departed in a triangular direction leading to the curious old bridge spanning the stream.

"What makes him hang about here so long?" asked Carry. "Has he a girl in the district? Do you think he seems gone on Dawn?"

"Perhaps it's Carry?"

"No such luck. I wish he were. I suppose he has money. They say over where he boards he has a set of rooms to himself, and is very liberal. What would he be doing up here so long?"

"He doesn't publish his business. Perhaps he's staying in this nice quiet nook to write a book or something," I said idly, by way of accounting for his idleness, or the curious might have set to work to discover more of his doings than he wished to get abroad just then.

"He doesn't look much like the fools that write books, but every one is writing one these days. I know of five or six about Noonoon even; it seems to be a craze."

"Perhaps a cycle!"

"I often wonder who is going to read 'em all and do the work."

This brought us to Clay's, Carry supporting me on her arm, and thus ended her discourse.

Dora stayed for tea, but it was a dull meal, as Dawn now appeared desirous of repelling him.

Andrew, who on account of his drubbing had been very subdued during dinner, had regained his usual form, and when Uncle Jake, to whom the freeing of women seemed an unabating irritation, remarked—

"Who's this young Walker? All the women will be mad for him because he's good-looking and got a soft tongue. They ought to stick to the present member who is known, this other fellow hasn't been heard of;" his grand-nephew replied—

"Like Uncle Jake; he's been in the municipal council fifteen years and never got heard of; he ought to put up an' see would the women go for him, because he's never been heard of an' is a bit good-lookin'."

"Well, there's one thing to his credit, an' that is, he's lived over sixty years an' never been heard of stealing fruit out of people's gardens, an' as for looks—'Han'some is who han'some does,'" said grandma, which effected the collapse of Andrew. In the Clay household there were ever current reminders of the truth of the old proverb, warning people in glass-houses to abstain from stone-throwing.

Dawn did not appear before me that night until I opened my door and called—

"Lady Fair, the kimono awaits thy perfumed presence!"

"I don't want to come to-night; I feel as scotty as a bear with a sore head."

"But I want you—youth must ever give way to grey hairs."

With that she appeared, and throwing herself backward on my bed, thrust her arms crossly above her head amid a tumble of soft bright hair.

"Youth, health, beauty, and lovers not lacking, what excuse have you for being out of tune? I want you to pilot me to tea at Grosvenor's to-morrow evening. Miss Grosvenor has invited you, Ernest, and myself."

"She just wants Ernest—she's terribly fond of the men."

"Well, did you ever see a normal girl who wasn't, and Mr Ernest is a man worth being fond of—I dearly love him myself."

"Pooh! I don't see anything nice about him," said Dawn aggressively.

"But you'll come to tea, won't you?"

"No, I can't. I never go to Grosvenors. Grandma doesn't care for them. She says he was only a pig buyer, and settled down there about the time she came here, and now they try to ape the swells and put on airs. They only come here to try to get on terms with some of the swell men. I wouldn't take him over there to please her if I were you."

"That's where you and I differ. I would just like to please them, and I'm sure it will do Ernest good to be in the company of such a pleasant and sensible girl as Ada Grosvenor."

"Yes, he'd want something to do him good, if I'm any judge."

Dawn's pretty mouth and chin were so querulous that I had to turn away to smile.

"So you won't come to tea?"

"I can't; I'd like to please you," she said somewhat softening, "but I've promised 'Dora' Eweword I'll go out rowing with him again to-morrow. He says he has something to say to me."

"He's been going to say this something a long time."

"Yes, but I stave him off. I know what it is right enough, and I don't want to hear it; but I suppose I had better please grandma."

"So you like him?"

"No, I detest him, and feel like smacking him on the mouth just where his underlip sticks out farther than the top one, every time he speaks; but what am I to do? I'd never be let go on the stage, and I might as well marry him as any one."

"Why marry any one? At nineteen, or ninety for that matter, there is no imperative hurry. To marry a man you dislike because you cannot attain your ambition is surely very silly indeed. Would you not love 'Dora' if you could go on the stage?"

"I wouldn't be seen in a forty-acred paddock with him. I'd like some man who had travelled, not an old Australian thing just living about here. I'd like an Englishman who'd take me home to England."

"You mustn't disparage your countrymen while I'm listening, as you'll find no better in any country or clime. Always remember they were among the first to enfranchise their women, and thus raise them above the status of chatteldom and merchandise."

"They only gave us the vote because they had to. Women have had to crawl to them for it, and pretend it was a great privilege the sweet darling almighties were allowing us, when all the time it has been our right, and they were selfish cowards who deserve no thanks for withholding it so long. And they gave it that grudgingly and are that narked about it, it makes me sick."

"Of course, when the matter is stripped to bare facts, the truth of your remarks is irrefutable, but we must gauge things comparatively, and remember how many other nations won't even grudgingly free their women. If you don't like Eweword I can't see any pressing necessity to think of marriage at all."

"Oh, well, I'd have it done then and wouldn't be everlasting plagued on the subject," she said with the unreasonableness of irritability.

"Would it not be better though to wait a little while in hopes of a better choice?"

"But I suppose it will always be the same. Any man at all worth consideration is sure to be married or at any rate is engaged."

Here was the clue to her irritation. It was that imaginary young lady of Ernest Breslaw's. Had she been a man, ere this she would have plunged into vigorous attempt to dislodge that or any other rival, no matter how assured his position, but being a woman and compelled to await "The idiot Chance her imperial Fate," the effect of such suppression on so robust and strenuous a nature was this form of hysteria.

"Well, what about a struggle for the desire of your heart? Undoubtedly you have, if well trained, sufficient voice to be a great asset on the stage, but it would take at the very least two years' hard work under a good master before it would be in the least fit for public use."

"I'd be twenty-one then."

"You are just at a good age to stand vigorous training."

"But what's the use of talking," she said hopelessly, "you don't know how mad grandma is against the stage. She says she'd rather see me in my grave, and I feel I'd never prosper if I went against her."

"Very likely her point of view is founded on hard facts, but training your voice isn't going on the stage, and in two years, if you are able to sing decently, perhaps no one will be so anxious as your grandma that you should be heard,—I've heard of such a case before;" and I didn't add that two years was a long way ahead for an old woman of seventy-six, and also for a girl to whom study was not quite a fetich, and ample time for the or some knight to have come to the rescue. These thoughts were not for publication, as they might have made me appear a traitor to the prejudices of one party and the desire of the other, whereas I was loyal to them both.

"It would be lovely if you could get on the soft side of grandma, but I'm afraid it's impossible. Fancy being able to sing and please people, and travel about in nice cities away from dusty, dreary, slow old Noonoon," said the girl, the crossness melting from her pretty face and giving place to radiance.

She toyed with some silk scarves of mine, and between whiles said—

"Isn't it funny some people think one thing good and others don't. No one around here wants to be on the stage but me, or seems to understand that actresses are made out of ordinary people like you and me. 'Dora' doesn't know anything about the stage, but Mr Ernest does. He doesn't think them terrible women, and says that his best woman friend was an actress once. If you thought grandma could be brought round at all I wouldn't go out with Dora to-morrow, I'd go with you to get out of it. Mr Ernest seemed to be very pleased with Ada Grosvenor; is she the same style as his young lady?"

This question wasn't asked because Dawn was transparent, but because I had led her to believe I was dense.

"No, not at all," I replied.

"What is she like?"

"She's about five feet five, and has a plump, dimpling figure. Her hair is bright brown, and her nose is an exquisitely cut little straight one. (Here I observed Dawn casting surreptitious glances in the mirror opposite.) Her eyes are bright blue with long dark lashes, and she has a mouth too pretty to describe, fitted up with a set of the loveliest natural teeth one could see in these days of the dentist; it is so perfect that it seems unnatural and a sad pity that it should sometimes be the outlet of censorious remarks about less beautiful sisters, but its owner is very young and not surrounded by the best of influences at present, and no doubt will have better sense as she grows older."

"What's her name?"

"Now you want to know too much, but I never knew another girl with such a beautiful one."

"She must be a beauty altogether," said Dawn rather satirically.

"She would be if she would only guard against being cross at times, but you must not breathe this to a soul as I'm only going on supposition. Young Ernest isn't engaged to her, but I've seen him with her once or twice, and he looked so pleased that I suspected him of kind regards, as no man could help admiring her."

"Is that all?" she said in a tone of relief; "he mightn't care for her at all. Just walking about with her and looking happy isn't any criterion. Men are always doing that with every girl."

"Dora didn't look happy with me to-night then—how do you account for that?"

She accounted for it with a merry laugh, as curled in the silk kimono she remained in possession of my nightly couch.

I was espousing this girl's cause because I could not bear to see her honest, wholesome youth and beauty making fuel for disappointment and bitterness as mine had done. There had been no one to help me attain the desire—the innocent, just, and normal desire of my girlhood's heart,—no one to lend a hand, till my heart had broken with slavery and disappointment, and at less than thirty-five all that remained for me was a little barren waiting for its feeble fluctuating pumping to cease.

The girl presently fell asleep, so I covered her, kimono and all, and extinguishing the light, lay down beside what had once been a tiny baby, whose feeble life opening with the day had been nurtured on the milk of old Ladybird, the spotted cow with a dew-lap and a crumpled horn. She was now, I trusted, enjoying the reward of her earthly labours in that best of heavens we love to picture for the dear animals that have served us well, and but for whose presence the world would be dreary indeed, while the sleep of her beautiful foster-daughter had advanced to hold dreams of jewelled gowns, thrilling solos, travel, and splendid young husbands who could do no wrong, but she knew no room for thought of "Dora," who on the morrow was to row her on the Noonoon. He might as well have relinquished the chase, for his chances here had grown as faint as those of pretty Dora Cowper—whose leg he classically stated he had pulled—had grown with him.

Ah, well, there is a law of retribution in all things, direct or indirect, visible or invisible.

I lay awake a long time contemplating the best way of approaching Grandma Clay in regard to Dawn's singing lessons. One by one the passenger trains streamed into Noonoon, halted a panting five minutes at the station, then rumbled over the strange old iron-walled bridge, slowed down again to the little siding of Kangaroo on the other side, from whence up, up, the mountain-sides above the fertile valley, leaving the peaceful agriculturists soundly asleep after their toil. The heavy "goods" lumbered by unceasingly, the throbbing of their great engines, their signalling, shunting, and tooting proving a perennial delight to me, comforting me with the knowledge that I still could feel a pulsation from the great population centres where my fellows congregate.

It had lulled me to doziness, when I was aroused by the electric alarm bell, the purpose of which was to warn folk when a train neared the bridge. A very necessary device, as there was but one bridge for all traffic, it being cut into two departments by three high iron walls that shut out an exquisite view of the river, and confined and intensified the rumble of trains in a manner well calculated to inspire the least imaginative of horses with the fear that the powers of evil had broken loose about them. The alarm-bell was humanly contrary in the discharge of its duty, and rang long and loudly when there was no train, and was not to be heard at all when they were rushing by in numbers. On this occasion, there being no train to drown its blatant voice, it so disturbed me that I was keenly alive to a dialogue that was proceeding in Miss Flipp's room.

"You must go away, I tell you," said Mr Pornsch. "A nice thing it would be if a man in my position were implicated."

"I didn't think a man of your class would be so cruel," sobbed the girl.

In rejoinder the man admitted one of the truths by which our civilisation is besmirched.

"There's only one class of men in dealing with women like you."

Then fell a silence, during which Dawn turned in her sleep, and I placed her head more comfortably lest she should awake and hear what was proceeding.

Not that it would in any way have sullied her, for her virtue, by sound heredity and hardy training, was no hothouse plant, liable to shrivel and die if not kept in a certain temperature, but was a sturdy tree, like the tall white-trunked young gums of her native forests, on which the winds of knowledge could blow and the rains of experience fall without in any way mutilating or impairing its reliability and beauty. It was for the sake of our poor sister wayfarer who was on a terrible thoroughfare, amid robbers and murderers, but who did not want her plight to be known, that I did not wish Dawn to awake.



FOURTEEN.

THE PASSING OF THE TRAINS.

Next morning, when Andrew and I had finished the separator, grandma came over to inspect the work. She sniffed round the dishes and cans, which barely passed muster, and then descended upon the table by running her slender old forefinger along the eaves, with the result that it came up soiled with the greasy slush that careless wiping had left there.

"Look at that, you dirty good-for-nothink young shaver; if the inspector came round we'd most likely lose our licence for it, an' it's no fault of mine. If a great lump your age can't be depended on for nothink, I don't know what the world is coming to. I have to be responsible for everythink that goes on your back and into your stummick, and yet you can't do a single thing. You think I'm everlastin' joring, but I have to be. Some day, if ever you have a house of your own, you'll know how hard it is."

"I'm goin' to take jolly fine care I never have no house of me own. The game ain't worth the candle," responded Andrew; "I reckon them as comes and lives in the place, like some of them summer-boarders, and orders us about as if they was Lord Muck an' we wasn't anybody, has the best of it."

"That ain't the point. I'm ashamed of that table. W'en I was young no one ever had to speak to me about things once, before I knew. Once I left drips round the end of my table, and me mother come along and 'Martha,' says she—"

"It's a wonder the wonderful Jim Clay didn't say it," muttered the irreverent representative of the degenerate rising generation sotto voce.

"'If that's the way you wash a table,' says she, 'no blind man would choose you for his wife,' for that was the way they told if their sweetheart was a good housekeeper, by feelin' along the table w'en they was done washin' up."

"An' what did you say?" interestedly inquired Andrew.

"I didn't say nothink. In them days young people didn't be gabbing back to their elders w'en they was spoke to, but held their mag an' done their work proper," she crushingly replied.

"But I was thinkin'," said Andrew quite unabashed, "that you was a terrible fool to be took in with that yarn. For who'd want to be married by a blind man, an' I reckon that blind men oughtn't be let to marry at all, and I think anyhow he ought to have been glad to get any woman, without sneakin' around an' putting on airs about being particular," he earnestly contended.

"But that ain't the point, anyhow," said she.

"Well, what did you tell it to me for, grandma?"

"Hold your tongue," said the old lady irately; "sometimes you might argue with me, but there's reason in everythink, an' if you don't have that table scrubbed and cleaned proper by the next time I come round you'll hear about it."

With this she walked farther on towards the pig-sty and cow-bails, and considering this a good opportunity for private conversation I went with her, remarking in a casual manner—

"Your granddaughter has a very good voice."

"Yes; a good deal better than some people that think they can sing like Patti, and set theirselves up about it."

"Yes; but she badly needs training."

"She sings twice as well as some that has been trained and fussed with."

"Probably; but she requires training to preserve the voice. She produces it unnaturally, and in a few years the voice will be cracked and spoilt."

"All the better, an' then she'll give up wanting to go on the stage with it."

"Is there anything frightful in that?" I said gently. "A great many mothers would give all they possessed to get their daughters on the stage. It is an exploded idea to think the stage a bad place."

"A lot is always tellin' me that, an' I believed them till I went to see for meself, and the facts was too much of a eye-opener for me. I'll keep to me own opinions for the future. It will be three years ago this month, Dawn prevailed upon me to go to a play there was a lot of blow about, an' I was never so ashamed in me life. I didn't expect much considerin' the way I was rared regardin' theayters, but it beat all I ever see."

"What was it?"

"I don't know the name, but it was a character of a play. There was women in it must have been forty by the figure of them, and they had all their bosoms bare, and showed their knees in little short skirts. They stood in rows and grinned—the hussies! They ought to have set down an' hid theirselves for shame! I thought we must have made a mistake and got into a fast show, but we read in the paper after that among the audience was all the big bugs, an' they seemed to be enjoyin' theirselves an' laughing as if it was a intellectual, respectable entertainment. I wanted to get up an' leave, but Dawn coaxed me an' I give in, an' thought the next might be better, but it was worse. I give you my word for it, there was hussies there on that stage, before respectable people's eyes, trying all they knew to make men be bad. They was fast pure and simple, just the same as some Jim Clay told me about once when he went to Sydney on his own. The way he described their carryin's on was just like them actresses on the stage, an' me a respectable married woman who's rared a family, havin' paid to look at them! I was ashamed to hold me head up after it for a long time. 'It's only actin', grandma,' says Dawn, but to think that people would act things like that; no good modest woman would ever do it, an' the Bible strictly warns us to abstain from the appearance of evil. An' even that wasn't all; they come out an' kissed one another—married women supposed to be kissing other men. What sort of a example was that to be setting other men an' women? It was the lowerin'est thing I ever see. I told Dawn she was not to breathe where we had been, an' from that day to this I never would have a actor or a actress in my house. I'd just as soon have a real loud woman as one who gets out on a stage where every one is lookin' at her and pretends to be one. She'd have no shame to stand between her and the bad. Oh no! there must be reason in everythink. I was prepared for a terrible lot of fools and rot, but that I should be so lowered was a eye-opener."

"I feel exactly the same in regard to the stage, Mrs Clay, but I like concerts, when the singers just come out and sing—do you not?"

"That ain't so bad, I admit."

"You would not object to Dawn singing on a platform, would you?"

"No; doesn't she often sing on the platform in Noonoon? They're always after her for some concert or another. It's a bad plan to sing too much for them. They don't thank you for it. They'd only say we're tired of him or her, and the one who'd be sour an' wouldn't sing often would be considered great."

"Well, let her have lessons, so she could sing with greater ease at these concerts."

"She can sing well enough for that. It would be throwing away money for nothink."

"But if trained she could sometimes command a fee."

"I've got plenty to keep her without that," said the old lady, bridling, "and it might give her stronger notions for the stage."

I was thankful that I had never published my calling.

"I had me own ideas of them before—walkin' about, and everythink they do or say they're wonderin' what people is thinkin' of them, and if they're observin' what great bein's they are. An' I've seen 'em here—goin' in fer drink an' all bad practices, and w'en I remonstrate with 'em, 'It's me temperament,' says they, an' led me to believe by the airs of them that this temperament makes 'em superior to the likes of ordinary human bein's like me an' you; an' this temperament that makes 'em not fit to do honest common work, but is makin' 'em low crawlers, is the thing that at the same time makes 'em superior. I don't see meself how the two things can be reconciled. There must be reason in everythink."

"If you want to turn your granddaughter from the stage, let her start vocal training. You'll see that before twelve months she'll have enough of it. It would keep her content for the present, and in the meantime she might marry," I contended.

"If I could be sure she wouldn't come in contact with them actin' and writin' fools; if she was to marry one of them it would be all up with her. Do you know anythink about teachers?"

"Yes; I would be only too pleased to see to that part of it. Your granddaughter is a great pleasure to me. She gives me some interest in life which, having no relations and being unfit for permanent occupation, I would otherwise lack."

"Well, I'm sure Dawn would interest anybody, and I think you're a good companion for her. She seems to have took up with you, and you've evidently been a person that's seen somethink, an' can tell her this, that, an' the other, but as for that she don't want no tellin' to be better than most. Some people!—" Grandma always worked herself up to a pitch of congested choler when these unworthy individuals were mentioned.

"I'll think about the singin' lessons if they ain't beyond reason. She's been terrible good lately, and deserves somethink. Here's Larry Witcom arrove, an' there's Carry gone out to him. I want to see him meself; he's been a little too strong with his prices lately, but he's the obliginest feller in many ways. I don't hear anythink about it not bein' Carry's week in the kitchen w'en Larry comes. She's always ready to give Dawn a hand then. But we was all young once; I can remember w'en I worked a point, whether it was me turn or not, to get near Jim Clay."

"Dawn, I think the battle for the singing lessons is half won," I said to that individual when I met her privately a few minutes later.

"Really, it can't be true!" said the girl with an intonation of delight, as she drew a tea-towel she had been washing through her shapely hands and wrung it dry.

Uncle Jake then entered, and cut short further private discussion.

"There, Dawn!" he said, tossing a pair of trousers on the kitchen-table, "the seat of them is out, an' I want to put 'em on to do a little blacksmithin'—they're dirty."

"That's easy to be seen and known too, as some people's things are always dirty," said she. "When do you want them?"

"At once."

"At once! You'd come in the middle of cooking some pastry and want a woman to put patches on a dirty old pair of trousers, and then want to know why the dinner wasn't up to tick; and besides, it's Carry's week in the house."

For Dawn's sake I would have offered to do the patching, but feared Uncle Jake might suspect me of matrimonial designs upon him, such being the conceit of old men.

"I never go to Carry," he snapped, "an' it's a pity your mother wasn't alive instead of you, she could put a patch on in five minutes any time you asked her, but she never spent her time in roarin' and bellerin' round after a vote;" and so saying Uncle Jake disappeared, leaving his grandniece with her pretty pink cheeks deepened to scarlet, and a spark in her blue eyes.

"The old dog! if he wasn't grandma's brother I'd hate him. It's always these crawling old things who can do nothing themselves, and have to be kept by a woman, who are always the worst at trying to make women's position lower, and talk about them as inferior. He's always after a woman to do this and to do that, and comparing her—I'd like to see the woman, mother or father—who could put a patch on those pants in five minutes."

"There's one way it could be done in the time," I said, calling to mind a prank related by a gay little friend—"clap it on with cobbler's wax."

Dawn's eyes danced, and the irritation receded from the corners of the pretty mouth as, procuring a piece of cloth and a lump of cobbler's wax, she did the deed in less than five minutes, and Uncle Jake contentedly received his trousers, while I departed to put in some more time with my friend Andrew, without telling her there might be a sequel to patching trousers with cobbler's wax.

"Well, Andrew, how goes the scrubbing?"

"Oh, great! Look at that!" said he, drawing back to exhibit a really clean table; and as it would not have conduced to our friendship had I pointed out that it had been arrived at at the expense of slushing the lime-washed wall and the stand of the separator, I wisely kept silent.

"There! I reckon me grandma nor Jim Clay neither never done a table better," he said with enviable self-appreciation. "You know I reckon them old yarns about the people bein' so good w'en they was young is a little too thin to stand washin'—don't you? You've only got to take the things the wonderful Jim Clay and me grandma done w'en they was courtin',—you get her on a string to tell you,—an' if Dawn done the same with any of the blokes now, she'd jolly soon hear about it; an' as for old Jake there, I reckon I'd be able to put him through meself at his own age—don't you? Anyhow, I'm full of farmin'. It's only fools an' horses sweat themselves, all the others go in for auctioneering, or parliament, or something, and have a fine screw comin' in for nothing."

"But think of those water-melons," I said; for as a subject of conversation he most frequently and most lovingly referred to these.

"But I could buy a waggon-load of 'em for one day's pay, an' not have any tuggin' and scratchin' with 'em. Melons ain't too stinkin', but lor', tomatoes is a stunner! They rotted till you couldn't stand the smell of them, and it would give a billy-goat the pip to hear them mentioned. There was no sale, and the blow-flies took to 'em. One man down here had thirty acres. I'm goin' to be somethink, so I can make a bit of money. No one thinks anythink of you if you ain't got plenty money. You know how you feel if a person has plenty money, you think twice as much of him as if he hasn't any. There's nothink to be made at farmin', delvin' and scrapin' your eyeballs out for no return," said this youngster, who did barely enough to keep him in exercise, who had been fed to repletion, and comfortably clothed and bedded all his sixteen years.

Luncheon or dinner was enlivened by an altercation between Dawn and her uncle.

The blacksmithing to which he had referred was the act of sitting down beside the forge, where he had grown so warm that the sequel to mending trousers with cobbler's wax had eventuated. The melted wax had attached the garment to the old man's person, and he had sat—his sitting capacity was incalculable—until it had cooled again, and on rising suffered an amount of discomfort it would be graceful to leave to the imagination. Uncle Jake however was not so considerate, and aired his grievance in a manner too brutally real for imagination.

To do her justice Dawn did not think of the joke going thus far, so I attempted to take the blame, but she would not have this.

"I want him to think I knew how it would turn out. I'd do it to him every day if I could."

Grandma fortunately took her part, and the mirth of Andrew and Carry was very genuine.

"I reckon I was as smart as my mother that time," giggled Dawn, as she carried in the dinner.

"It would have been a funny joke if you played it on some good-humoured young feller," said grandma, "but Jake there is entitled to some kind of consideration, because he is old and crotchety."

"I'd play it on 'Dora' Eweword," said Dawn, "only that he might stick here so that he'd never move at all if I didn't take care."

The first moment we had in private she took opportunity of saying—

"I think I'll go over to Grosvenor's with you this evening, but not to tea. I'll go over to bring you home, if you'll help me make some excuse to get out of going rowing with 'Dora.'"

"Why not come to tea? that would be sufficient excuse."

"Oh, but they try to ape the swells, and grandma doesn't like them; but I'll be sure to go for you after it, and that will save Mr Ernest coming round with you."

I thanked her, though her escort was not at all necessary, seeing that instead of saving Ernest it would only make his presence surer. There being nothing else to do during the afternoon, I awaited the time of setting out for the Grosvenor's, who tried to ape the swells—the swells of Noonoon! These being, as far as I could gather, the doctors, the lawyer, a couple of bank managers on a salary somewhere about L250 per annum, the Stip. Magistrate, and one or two others—surely an ordinarily harmless and averagely respectable section of the community, in aping whom one would be in little danger of being called upon to act up to an etiquette as intricate and tyrannous as that in use at court.

In the old days the town had been the terminus of the train, and it had squatted at the foot of the mountains, while strings of teams carried the goods up the great western road out to Bathurst and beyond, to Mudgee, Dubbo, and Orange. Nearly all the old houses—grandma's and Grosvenor's among them—had been hotels in those days, when the miles had been ticked off by the square stones with the Roman lettering, erected by our poor old convict pioneers, who blazed many a first track. Every house had found sufficient trade in giving D.T.'s to the burly, roystering teamsters who lived on the roads, dealt in no small quantities, and who did not see their wives and sweethearts every week in the year.

As the afternoon advanced, true to appointment, "Dora" Eweword arrived to take Dawn for a row. His chin was red from the razor, and he looked well in a navy-blue guernsey brightened by a scarlet tie knotted at the open collar, displaying a columnar throat which, if strength were measured by size, announced him capable of supporting not only a Dawn, but a Sunset. He sat on an Austrian chair, for which he was some sizes too large and too substantial, and reddened as he laughed and talked with Carry, till I appeared and spent some time in talking and admiring his appearance until Dawn came upon the scene.

"Well, Dawn," he said, "I'm waiting for this row; are you ready?"

Dawn glanced at me.

"Dawn has promised to chaperon me to-night," I said. Dawn decamped.

"Miss Grosvenor has invited Mr Ernest and me to tea, and to go without a representative of Mrs Grundy, I believe, is not correct in the social life of Noonoon."

Eweword laughed; but his face fell, and his reply showed him less obtuse than he appeared on the surface, seeing he was the first and only person to see through my matchmaking tactics.

"Touting for the red-haired bagman," he said, as Ernest could be seen swinging up the path.

"Supposing I am, what then?" I asked, regarding him with a level glance, and feeling more respect for his intelligence than I had heretofore experienced.

"Oh, well, I suppose all is fair in some things."

He would not say love, as that would have admitted too much, and a lover admitting his passion and a drunkard confessing his disease are exceptions that prove the rule.

His remark was uttered with a broad good nature that would lead him to do and leave undone great things. In a desire to please the present girl he was not above saying he had been "pulling the leg" of the one absent, but he would also be capable of standing aside when he felt deeply—as deeply as he could feel—to allow a better man sea-room; and he was further capable of sufficient humility to think there could be a better man than himself, or so I adjudged him, and being the only narrator of this, the only history in which he is likely to receive mention, this delineation of his character will have to remain unchallenged.

Ernest had a geranium in his button-hole, and looked more immaculately spruce than ever, and even his red hair could not obliterate the fact of his being a goodly sight, and as such grandma recognised him.

"That's a fine sturdy chap," she afterwards observed. "It's a pity he ain't got somethink to do to keep him out of mischief. Is he a unemployed? He don't look like one of these Johnnies that has nothink to do but hang around a street corner and smoke a cigarette."

The two young men measured glances every whit as critically as girls do under similar conditions, and then equally as casually made reference to the weather. Ernest was somewhat overshadowed by Eweword, as the latter was superior in size and cast of features, being fully six feet, while Ernest was not more than five feet nine inches; but as a girl very rarely, if she has a choice, cares most for the handsomest of her admirers, I was not in the least cast down about this.

When it was time for me to depart, Ernest rose too, but not Dawn. Ernest's face went down, Eweword's brightened.

"Miss Dawn is not coming over now, but later on," I said.

The men's glances reversed once more. As the former and I departed—Ernest carrying a wrap for me—I heard Eweword say—

"Well, come on, Dawn, you're not going to Grosvenor's after all. It seems that old party was only pulling my leg."

Ernest good-naturedly struggled to talk with me, but I spared him the ordeal, and, arrived at Grosvenor's, interestedly studied them to discover what manner of procedure "trying to ape the swells" might be—the swells of Noonoon—the doctor who thought I might "peg out" any minute, and the bank managers and the parsons.

The only difference to be observed between the tea-table at Clay's and Grosvenor's was that at the latter the equivalents of Uncle Jake and Andrew did not appear in a coatless condition, were treated to the luxury of table-napkins, and Mrs Grosvenor, who served, attended to people according to their rank instead of their position at the table, and entrusted them with the sugar-basin and milk-jug themselves. Farther than this there was no distinction, and this was not an alarming one. Certainly Miss Grosvenor, who had not enjoyed half Dawn's educational advantages, did not as glaringly flout syntax, and slang was not so conspicuous in her vocabulary. She and Ernest got on so well that none but my practised eyes could detect that as the evening advanced his brown ones occasionally wandered towards the entrance door, which showed that much as Miss Grosvenor had got him out of his shell, she had not obliterated Dawn.

That young lady arrived at about a quarter to ten, and we started homewards, determining to go a long way round, first by way of the Grosvenor's vehicle road to town, by this gaining the public highway, along which we would walk to the entrance to grandma's demesne. This was preferable to a short-cut and rolling under the barbed-wire fencing in the long grass sopping with dew, which at midnight or thereabouts would stiffen with the soft frosts of this region that would flee before the sun next morning.

Dawn's cheeks were scarlet from rowing on the river with "Dora" Eweword, and she spoke of her jaunt as soon as we got outside, apparently pregnant with the knowledge innate in the dullest of her sex, that the most efficacious way of giving impetus to the love of one lover is to have another.

This, however, is another art which, like good cooking, must be "done to the turn," and in this instance there was danger of it being done too soon, as Ernest's amour had not taken firm root yet; and a man, unless he be either of gigantic pluck or no honour at all, will not hurry to interfere with the secured property of another man.

They chatted in a desultory fashion while I manoeuvred to relieve them of my presence. The night was lit by a million stars, paling towards the east, where behind the hills a waning moon was putting in an appearance. The electric lights of the town scintillated like artificial stars, and away down the long valley could be seen here and there the twinkle of a farmhouse light, showing where some held mild wassail or a convivial evening; for there were not many of the agriculturalists, tired from their heavy toil, who were otherwise out of bed at this ungodly hour of the night.

The crisp winter air agreed with me, and I felt unusually well.

"Let me walk behind, this night is too glorious to waste in talking politics, so you young people get out of my hearing and thresh out your candidate's merit and demerit and leave me to think," I said, for politics were in the air and they were touching upon them. They obeyed me, and soon were lost to view in the dark of the osage and quince hedges grown as breakwinds on the west of Grosvenor's orangery. Soon I could not hear their footfalls, for I stood still to watch the trains pass by. 'Twas the hour of the last division of the Western passenger mail, bearing its daily cargo of news and people to the great plains beyond the hills that loomed faintly in the light of the half moon. Haughtily its huge first-class engine roared along, and its carriage windows, like so many warm red mouths, permitted a glimpse of the folk inside comfortably ensconced for the night. It slowed across the long viaduct approaching the bridge, and crossed the bridge itself with a roar like thunder, then it swerved round a curve to Kangaroo till the window-lights gave place to its two red eyes at the rear. As it climbed the first spur of the great range, and all that could be seen was a belch of flame from the engine-door as it coaled, something of the old longing awoke within me for things that must always be far away. The throbbing engines spoke to my heart, and forgetting its brokenness, it stirred again to their measure—the rushing, eager measure of ambition, strife, struggle! I was young again, with youth's hot desire to love and be loved, and as its old bitter-sweet clamourings rushed over me I rebelled that my hair was grey and my propeller disabled. The young folks ahead had put me out of their life as young folks do, and, measuring the hearts of their seniors by the white in their hair and the lines around their eyes, would have been incredulous that I still had capacity for their own phase. Only the royalty of youth is tendered love in full measure; those who fail to attain or grasp it then find this door, from which comes enticing perfume and sound of luring music, shut against them for all time, and no matter how appealingly they may lean against its portals, it will rarely open again, for they have been laid by to be sold as remnants like the draper's goods which have failed to attract a buyer during the brief season they were displayed. I stood under the whispering osage and listened to the now distant train puffing its way over the wild mountains, also to be crossed by the great road first cut by those whose now long dead limbs had carried chains—members of a bygone brigade as I was one of a passing company. But probably they each had had their chance of love, and the old bitterness upsprung that mine had not fallen athwart my pathway. Fierce struggle had always shut me away from similar opportunity to that enjoyed by the young people ahead.

"Put back your cruel wheel, O Time!" I cried in my heart, "and give me but one hour's youth again—sweet, ecstatic youth with the bounding pulse, led by the purple mirage of Hope, whose sirens whisper that the world's sweets are sweet and its crowns worth winning. Let me for a space be free from this dastard age creeping through the veins, dulling the perspective of life and leadening the brain, whose carping companions draw attention to the bitters in the cups of Youth's Delights, and mutter that the golden crowns we struggle for shall tarnish as soon as they are placed on our tired brows!" Suddenly my bitter reverie was broken by the knight and the lady calling in startled tones. I replied, and presently they were upon me, Dawn very much out of breath.

"Oh, goodness, we thought you were ill again. You have given us such a shock. You should not have been left behind. I was a terrible brute that I didn't harness the pony and drive over for you;" and Ernest came in a slow second with—

"You should have taken my arm," and he wrapped my cloak about me with the high quality of gentleness peculiar to the best type of strong man.

Despite my assurance that I never had felt better, they insisted upon supporting me on either side; so slipping a hand through each of the young elbows conveniently bent, I playfully put the large hand on the right of me over the dimpling one on the left.

"There!" I said, taking advantage of the liberties extended a probable invalid, "I've made a breastwork of the hands of the two dearest young friends I have, so now I cannot fall;" and seeing I put it at that, at that they were content to let it remain, and the big hand very carefully retained the little one, so passive and warm, in its shy grasp. At the gate I dismissed Ernest, and Dawn condescended to remark that he wasn't quite such a fool as usual, which interpreted meant that he had not been so guardedly stand-off to her as he sometimes was.

The trains once more entertained my waking hours that night. Under Andrew's tutorage I had learned to distinguish the rumble of a "goods" from the rush of a "passenger," a two-engine haul from a single, and even the heavy voice of the big old "shunter" that lived about the Noonoon station had grown familiar; but the haughtiest of all was a travelling engine attended only by its tender, and speeding by with lightsome action, like a governor thankfully free from officialdom and hampered only by a valet.

Musing on what a little time had elapsed since the work of the passenger trains had been done by the coaches with their grey and bay teams of five, swinging through the town at a gallop, and with their occupants armed to the teeth against bushrangers, I dozed and dreamt. I dreamt that I was in one of the sleeping-cars which had superseded Cobb & Co.'s accommodation for travellers, and that from it I could see in a bird's-eye view not only the magnificent belt of mountains, the bluest in the world, but whirling down their westward slopes with a velocity outstripping the scented winds from sandal ridges and myall plains, I slid across that great western stretch of country where a portion of the railway line runs for a hundred and thirty-six miles without rise or fall or curve in the longest straight ribbon of steel that is known. But ere I reached its end I wakened with a start through something falling in Miss Flipp's room.

Surely I had not slept for more than half an hour, because the light which had shone in the adjoining room as we returned from Grosvenor's was still burning. Presently Miss Flipp put it out, and closing her door after her, stealthily made her way from the house. She trod cautiously and noiselessly, but her gown caught on the lower sprouts of the ragged old rose-bushes beside the walks, and though she took a long time to open the little gate opening towards the wharves and the narrow pathway running along the river-bank to the bridge, it creaked a little on its rusty hinges, so that I heard it and fell to awaiting the girl's return.

I waited and waited, and beguiled the time by counting the trains that passed with the quarter hours. There were so many that I soon lost count. This line carried goods to the great wheat and wool-growing west and brought its produce to the city. Many of the noisy trains were laden with "fifteen hundred" and "two thousand" lots of "fats," and the yearly statistics dealing with the sales at Homebush chronicled their total numbers as millions. From beyond Forbes, Bourke, and Brewarrina they came in trucks to cross the bridge spanning the noble stream at the mountain's base, but they never went back again to the great plains where they had basked in plenty or staggered through droughts as the fickle seasons rose and fell. The voracious, insatiable maw of the city was a grave for them all, and the commercial greed which falls so heavily on the poor dumb beasts in which it traffics, caged them so tightly for their last journey that by the time they reached Noonoon they were bruised and cramped and not a few trodden under foot. The empty trucks going west again made the longest trains, as they could be laden with nothing but a little wire-netting for settlers who were fighting the rabbits, and were easily distinguishable from other "goods," as when they clumsily and jerkily halted the clanking of their couplings and the bumping of their buffers could be heard for a mile or more down the valley. The splendid atmosphere intensified all sounds and carried them an unusual distance, and many a time at first I was wont to be aroused from sleep in the night with a notion that the thundering trains were going to run right over the house.

On the night in question I had not heard Miss Flipp return from her midnight tryst, though all the luggage trains had passed and it neared the time of the first division of the up or citywards mail from the west, which was the earliest train to arrive in town from the country daily. It passed Noonoon in the vicinity of 4 A.M.—a radiant hour in the summer dawn, but then in winter, the time when bed is most alluring, when the passengers' breath congeals on the window-panes, they complain that the foot-warmers have got cold, and give yet one more twist to their comforters and another tug at their 'possum or wallaby rugs. This train passed with its shaking thunder, drew into Noonoon for refreshments, then on and on with noisy energy, but still Miss Flipp did not return.

I concluded that she must have decided to leave us in this fashion, or that I had missed her entry during the rumble of a passing train, or mayhap I had snoozed for a moment, or perhaps an hour, as the unsympathetic heavy sleepers aver the insomnists must do; and ceasing to be on the alert any longer, I really slept.



FIFTEEN.

ALAS! MISS FLIPP!

I hastened to appear at the half-past seven breakfast, as no excuse for non-appearance was taken, and the only concession made to Miss Flipp, who had not been present at it for some time, was that she could make herself a cup of cocoa when she chose to rise. For this meal grandma ladled out the porridge and flavoured it with milk and sugar in the usual way.

"I say, Dawn, which of them blokes, Ernest or Dora, is the best boat-puller?" inquired Andrew as he received his portion. "You were mighty stingy with the sugar, grandma!"

"Dora isn't in it," responded Carry. "Mr Ernest could get ahead of him every time."

"So he ought!" said Dawn. "His ears are the size of a pair of sails, and would pull him along."

Thus was published another defect in my knight, till I feared that it must be only my partial gaze that discerned a knight at all.

"Dear me," interposed grandma, "a man can't look or speak or walk but he's this, that, and the other. Things weren't so in my day. Of course there were some things that were took exception to, but there must be reason in everythink, an' I don't see what difference a man's ears being a little big makes. My father's ears—your great-grandfather's—was none too small, an' he was always a good kind man."

"I don't care if my own ears were big, it wouldn't make me like them," said the irrepressible Dawn; and grandma had just finished what she termed "dosing" the last plate of porridge, when we were interrupted by the appearance of policeman Danby at the French Lights. There was nothing strange in this appearance of the embodiment of the law, even at that early hour of the morning; for the huge young man with the rollicking face and curly hair, though a good officer in attending to his work, was a better in admiring a girl, which, after all, taking matters at the base, is the chief and most vital business of life, as, were it neglected, there would be no police or populace.

Well, as I said, policeman Danby knew a pretty girl when he saw one, and there being two at Clay's, that household, in the way of the law, was very well looked after indeed; and for the purpose of escaping the annual registration fee, Andrew's little dog, "Whiskey," had remained a puppy as long as some young ladies tarry under thirty.

Carry on rising to admit the caller had the usual tussle with the door, while grandma reiterated uncomplimentary remarks about the "blessed feller" who should some time since have effected repairs, and Danby upon entering wore an extremely grave face, looked neither at Dawn nor Carry, but addressed himself straight to Mrs Martha Clay.

"I have to trouble you about a very unpleasant matter," he said, and cruelly all eyes went to poor Andrew, as it was but recently he had to be chased home for breaking the law.

"Yes," said grandma, rising actively, and though a flurried colour came to the old withered cheek, the spark of battle flashed in the stern blue-grey eye.

"Could I see you privately?" said Danby.

"Certainly," said Mrs Clay: "but I'm not fond of secrecy; things is better open, and this is the first time in my life I've had to be seen secret by the police. Come this way."

We said nothing, but dropped our feeding tools and waited in suspense, till in less than a minute grandma thrust her head in the dining-room door.

"For mercy's sake, Dawn, look in Miss Flipp's room and see is she there."

Dawn rose in a hurry and boxed Andrew's ears as she passed, because he too rose and tumbled over his chair in her way.

"Some people ought to tie themselves up to be out of the way," she ejaculated.

"Miss Flipp is not in her room," she presently called, "and her bed is smooth and made up."

"God save us, then! Mr Danby says she's drownded in the river," exclaimed her grandma. "What's to be done?"

"We'll spare you all the trouble possible, Mrs Clay," said the man, with the respect always tendered the old dame; "but I'm afraid it's a suicide. Some men going to work on the new viaduct just noticed her clothes sticking up as they crossed the bridge at daylight and reported it, and I was sent down. We've taken the body to Jimmeny's pub., and sent for the coroner, at all events."

Dawn and Andrew howled together in a frightened manner, while the sensible Carry, who never lost her head, admonished them—

"Don't be jackdaws. That won't mend matters. Perhaps it isn't half as bad as some make out. Things never are when you get the right hang of them."

"Things are bad enough anyhow, but the way to mend 'em ain't to be snivelling," rapped out grandma, giving Dawn and Andrew a shaking that braced them up.

Things were indeed bad enough, and nothing could mend them. They had gone beyond repair. It transpired that my senses had been correct, and poor Miss Flipp had not returned that moonlit night as I lay listening to the passing trains. She had ended her ruined life by weighting her feet and dropping into the pretty stretch of water under the bridge, where the locomotives rushed by like thunder, and from where could be seen the twinkling electric lights of one of the oldest towns in Australia.

The inquest, at which we all had to appear, elicited information that fairly stood poor grandma's hair on end. It was a great blow to find that she had been harbouring a woman who was not as Caesar's wife, and that it was fear of the penalty of her divergence from what is accepted as virtue, had driven her to take her life ere she had transmitted the tribulation of being to a nameless child.

Nothing was cleared up regarding her antecedents. The person by whom she was supposed to be recommended to Mrs Clay knew of no such individual, and no one came to claim her.

Her uncle, it was discovered, had a day or two previously sailed for America on urgent business, and after the girl's death an affectionate letter for her arrived from him. She had left nothing to fix the blame where it belonged, but with a misdirected loyalty so common in her sex had paid all the debt her frail self.

The post on the day of her death brought me a pathetic little note, in which she stated that she wished to bear the whole blame; a woman always had to in any case, and as she could not face it she had decided upon death. She had written this to me because she felt I had had an inkling of how matters had been with her, and she thanked me that I had kept silent, in conjunction with the observation that it was not usual for such as she to meet with forbearance from those who had had sense to preserve their respectability. Ah, the regret that consumed me that I had not risked the unpopularity of interference and sought her confidence. I might have been able to have saved her from such an end!

I kept my knowledge to myself. It would scarcely have hurt Mr Pornsch. Under the British Constitution property is far more sacred than women. But having a fatality in belief that there is a law of retribution in all things, I hoped to be able to sheet this crime home to its perpetrator in a way that should put him to confusion when he least expected it.

There was ample money for burial among the girl's belongings, which were taken in charge by the police, and there let the cruelly common incident rest for the present.

The affair so upset Dawn that she refused to occupy her usual room any longer, and at her suggestion she and I determined to occupy a big upstairs room, up till that time filled with rubbish. This being agreed upon we forsook the apartments opening into the river garden, and betook ourselves to an altitude from which we had even a better view of the valley, river, and trains.

Dawn so perceptibly went "off colour" that I persuaded her grandmother to let the singing lessons begin by way of diverting her mind.

The old lady would not contemplate paying more than two guineas per quarter, so I saw a six guinea teacher, arranged with him to take the pupil at four, two of which I privately paid myself, and Dawn at last set out for the city for her first lesson in the arduous and unattractive boo-ing and ah-ing that lie at the foundation of a singer's art.