THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 BERKEIOUW BOOKOEALERS SYDNEY
 
 THE-UTTLE-DUCHE5J 
 
 "NAVT1LVJ 
 
 ITERIEJ
 
 THE LITTLE DUCHESS. 
 
 [Page 15
 
 THE LITTLE 
 
 AND- OTHER 5TOR1E5 
 
 EJAEL TURNER 
 
 of "jtvf M LITTLE Au5TRAU^N5 " 
 
 WARD
 
 PR 
 
 boo 6 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 THE LITTLE DUCHESS ... i 
 
 WILKES OF WATERLOO ... ... ... ... 19 
 
 AT A STREET CORNER ... ... 37 
 
 To THE CITY OF RASPBERRY JAM ... ... 43 
 
 TOYCHILD 61 
 
 A MODERN ACHILLES 77 
 
 ON A PENNY FERRY 101 
 
 AS IT FELL OUT Iig 
 
 ALMOST'AN IDYLL . 135 
 
 1381175
 
 NOTE. 
 
 My thanks are due to the Editors of the Sydney "Daily 
 Telegraph," ''The Bulletin," "The Town and Country 
 Journal," "The Windsor Magazine," and other periodicals, 
 for permission to reprint some of the stories in this volume.
 
 The Little Duchess: 
 
 and other Stories. 
 
 THE LITTLE DUCHESS. 
 
 "The tale is as old as the Eden tree, 
 And new as the new-cut tooth." 
 
 HE was the clerk of the cash tramway, 
 and when the rolling balls gave 
 him a moment's leisure, used to look down 
 from his high perch at the big shop beneath 
 his feet, and, in his slow, quiet style, study 
 the ways of the numberless assistants whose 
 life-books thus opened to him so many of 
 their pages. 
 
 Lately there had come to the place a 
 slight, grey-eyed girl, who wore her black 
 dress with such grace, and held her small 
 head with such dignity, that he whimsically 
 had named her to himself "The Little
 
 2 The Little Duchess. 
 
 Duchess." He liked to look down and 
 catch a glint of her hair's sunshine when 
 his brain was dulled with calculating change, 
 and his fingers ached with shutting cash- 
 balls and dispatching them on their journeys. 
 And he used to wonder greatly how any 
 customer could hesitate to buy silks and 
 satins when their lustre and sheen were 
 displayed by her slim little fingers and the 
 quality descanted on with so persuasive a 
 smile. There were handsomer girls in the 
 shop, girls with finer figures and better 
 features ; but, to the boy in his mid-air 
 cage, there was none with the nameless 
 dainty charms that made the little Duchess 
 so lovable. 
 
 For, of course, he did love her. In less 
 than two months he had begun to watch 
 for her cash-ball with a trembling eager- 
 ness, to smooth out and stroke gently the 
 bill her fingers had written, and to wrap it 
 and its change up again with a careful 
 tenderness that no one else's change and 
 bill received. He had spoken to her half-a-
 
 The Little Duchess. 3 
 
 dozen times in all ; twice at the door on 
 leaving weather remarks, to which she had 
 responded graciously; once or twice about 
 bills that she had come to rectify at the 
 desk, and once he had had the great good 
 fortune to find and return a handkerchief 
 she had dropped. Such a pretty, ridiculous 
 atom of muslin it was, with a fanciful 
 " Nellie " taking up one quarter, and some 
 delicate scent lending such subtle fascina- 
 tion that it was a real wrench for the lad 
 to take the handkerchief from his breast- 
 pocket and proffer it to her. 
 
 So great a wrench, indeed, that he prof- 
 ferred his love, too, humbly, but fervently, 
 and received a very wondering look from 
 the grey eyes, a badly-concealed smile, a 
 " Thank you " for the handkerchief, and a 
 "No, thank you" for the love. 
 
 He had kissed her, though, and that was 
 some consolation afterwards to his sore 
 spirit, kissed her right upon the sweet, 
 scarlet lips which had said " No " so de- 
 cidedly, and then, bold no longer, had fled
 
 4 The Little Duchess. 
 
 the shelter of the friendly packing-cases, and 
 beaten a retreat to his desk aloft. 
 
 That was nearly a fortnight ago ; not 
 once since had she spoken to him, and 
 to-day he was feeling desperate. 
 
 It had been a very busy morning, and 
 he had found hardly a second to raise his 
 eyes from his work. The one time he had 
 looked down she had been busy with a 
 customer a girl prettily dressed and golden- 
 headed like herself. That had been at 
 about ten o'clock. Before twelve her cash- 
 box, with the notch upon it that his penknife 
 had made, rolled down its line, and he 
 opened it as he had opened it twenty times 
 that morning ; but this time it bore his 
 fate. With the bill was a little twisted 
 note, on which "John Walters, private," 
 was written, and the boy's very heart leaped 
 at the sight. Down below, customers 
 wearily waited for change, and anxiously 
 watched for their own particular ball while 
 the deus ex machina read again and again, 
 with eager eyes : " Please will you meet me
 
 The Little Duchess. 5 
 
 at lunch-time in the Strand ? Do, if you 
 can. I am in trouble. You said you loved 
 me." Then, as he began mechanically to 
 manipulate the waiting balls, he looked down 
 to the accustomed place of the little Duchess. 
 She was pale, he saw, and her lips trembled 
 oddly now and again. There was a fright- 
 ened look in her grey eyes, and once or 
 twice he thought he noticed a sparkle as 
 of tears. 
 
 At lunch-time he actually tore through 
 the shop and away down to the appointed 
 place. She was there still pale, still nervous 
 and fluttering. 
 
 " Let us go to the Gardens. It's quieter," 
 he said, putting a great restraint upon him- 
 self; then, when at last they were within 
 the gates, " God bless you for this, Nellie ! " 
 
 " What ? " said the girl, with uncertainty, 
 but not looking at the plain, rugged face 
 that was all aglow with love for her. 
 
 " For telling me about the worry asking 
 me to come. Oh, God bless you, Nellie! 
 Now tell me."
 
 6 The Little Duchess. 
 
 She sat down on a seat and began to 
 cry, quietly and miserably, till the boy was 
 almost beside himself. At last, between the 
 sobs, he learned her trouble, which was 
 grave indeed. She and her sister had very 
 much wanted to go to a certain ball, and, 
 more than that, to have new dresses for it, 
 of soft white Liberty silk, such as she cut off 
 daily for fortunate customers. But her purse 
 was empty, so, in their emergency, the sisters 
 had hit upon a plan, questionable, indeed, 
 but not dishonestly meant. The sister came 
 to the silk counter and purchased thirty yards 
 of silk, paying 155. for it instead of $ 153. 
 
 " That was on account ; I was only taking 
 a little credit, like other customers," said the 
 little Duchess, with a haughty movement of 
 the head. " On Saturday I was going to 
 make out a bill for an imaginary customer, 
 and send the 5 up to the desk to you. 
 Don't imagine I would really wrong the 
 firm by a halfpenny." 
 
 " Oh, no," cried the boy eagerly ; " it's 
 all right."
 
 The Little Duchess. 7 
 
 " That's not all." The girl began to cry 
 again, hopelessly, miserably. " I had no 
 money to get the dresses made, and the 
 next customer paid -2 IDS., and and I 
 only sent los. up to you I wanted to make 
 it just $ I had borrowed, I thought I 
 might borrow enough, as I was borrowing 
 don't forget, I would rather have died than 
 have stolen the ^"5, Mr. Walters." 
 
 " Of course, of course, I understand," said 
 the cash clerk, seeing it was a worse fix 
 than he had imagined, but longing to take 
 her in his arms and kiss away the tears. 
 
 " And then that horrid Mr. Greaves, who 
 signed first in a hurry, asked for my book 
 and took it for something, and then sent 
 it up to the desk, and the figures are all 
 confused, and the check-leaf isn't the same 
 as I sent to you. I hadn't time to make 
 it right, and when the books are compared 
 to-night it will be noticed, and I shall get 
 into trouble and, oh, I am so miserable ! " 
 The little Duchess was sobbing pitifully. 
 
 He kissed her, this time in earnest ; on
 
 8 The Little Duchess. 
 
 the lips, the cheeks, the hair, the tear-wet 
 eyes. He only recollected himself when a 
 gardener's form, and especially his smile, 
 obtruded themselves upon their notice, and 
 they sat apart looking foolish until the two 
 o'clock bells made them hurry back to 
 the shop. 
 
 "I'll put everything right don't you 
 worry," he said ; and she smiled relievedly 
 and went to her counter. 
 
 That afternoon he did what all the other 
 years of his life he had deemed it im- 
 possible for him to do. He made a neat 
 alteration in his books so that the 5 in 
 question would not be missed. To-morrow, 
 he resolved, he would take 5 of his own 
 and pay it into the account of the firm. 
 The little Duchess should be his debtor, 
 and run no more risks. But, alas, for the 
 morrow ! 
 
 Before he had fairly taken his seat in 
 the morning before Nellie had finished 
 fastening at her neck the violets he had 
 brought her, some words were said at his
 
 The Little Duchess. g 
 
 elbow, and he slowly became aware that 
 he surely it was a dream ! was being 
 arrested for defalcations in his accounts. 
 He learned that for some time past the firm 
 had been aware of considerable discrepancies 
 in the books, and had placed a detective- 
 accountant in the office. Last night, for 
 the first time, the man had discovered, as 
 he thought, a clue, and had convinced the 
 firm that in Walters he had found the 
 offender. 
 
 The lad was ashen pale, horror stricken, 
 as he realized how these things must go 
 against him. He could not drag in the name 
 of the little Duchess even if he did, it 
 would not avail him much ; he certainly had 
 altered his books, and to mention the girl's 
 share would only be to have two of them 
 brought to trial, and perhaps to gaol. The 
 little Duchess in gaol ! That hair catching 
 the prison-yard sunshine ! That slender 
 form clad in the garments of shame ! The 
 boy drew a deep breath, gave one very 
 wistful glance at the silk counter, and then
 
 IO 
 
 The Little Duchess. 
 
 walked straight to the manager's room, 
 followed by the policeman. 
 
 " I took the $ yesterday, and brought it 
 back to-day. On my oath before God, sir, 
 I have never misapplied one farthing of my 
 moneys." 
 
 His voice trembled in its eagerness, the 
 deep-set eyes gleamed, and the white lips 
 worked. 
 
 " Your purpose, Walters ? " 
 
 The manager looked hard, disbelieving. 
 
 " Direst need. Oh, believe me, sir, I 
 have served you three years honestly as 
 man can serve yesterday I borrowed this 
 money and brought it back this morning 
 don't ruin my whole life for that one act." 
 
 " Your pressing need yesterday ? " 
 
 John drew a deep breath again. 
 
 " I can't well tell you." 
 
 Then the heads of the firm came in, in- 
 dignant at their misused trust, and they 
 scorned his story. The defalcations a- 
 mounted to almost ^"50 in all, and he had 
 confessed to 5, which had been found
 
 The Little Duchess. n 
 
 upon him. Of course, he and no other was 
 the offender, and they must teach their 
 employes a lesson. So John walked down 
 that long shop by the side of the official, 
 his head very erect, his face pale, and his 
 knees shaking : all his life he would re- 
 member the glances of pity, curiosity, and 
 disdain that met him on every side. As he 
 passed the silk counter, the little Duchess 
 was measuring a great piece of rose-red, 
 sheeny satin, that gleamed warm and 
 beautiful beneath her hands. She was very 
 . white, and in her eyes was a look of abject 
 horror and entreaty ; his eyes reassured her, 
 and he passed on and out of the door. All 
 his life he would remember that rose-red 
 satin and its brilliant, glancing lights. 
 
 After the trial everyone thought him for- 
 tunate to get only two years, and the little 
 Duchess, who had grown thin and old- 
 looking in the interval, breathed freely as 
 she read the account in the papers, and 
 saw that her name was not even mentioned 
 in connection with the matter. He wrote 
 
 B
 
 i2 The Little Duchess. 
 
 to her a loving, boyish letter, and told 
 her she must be true to him till he came 
 out, and that then they would be married 
 and go away where this could never be 
 heard of. 
 
 It was no small thing he had done for 
 her, he knew ; and, as he was not more than 
 human, he expected his reward. And the 
 little Duchess had cried quietly over the 
 letter, and for several days cut off silk and 
 satin with a pensive, unhappy look that 
 quite touched her customers those few 
 among them who realized that it was human 
 flesh and blood at the other side of the yard 
 measure. 
 
 Twenty months later the little Duchess 
 was at the same counter measuring silk and 
 satin for the stock-taking, when a note was 
 brought to her in a writing she remembered 
 too well. 
 
 " I got out to-day, Nellie Come down to 
 the Gardens in -the lunch-time." 
 
 She hesitated when the time came, but he
 
 The Little Duchess. 13 
 
 might come to the shop, and that would 
 never do. So she put her hat on thought- 
 fully and set out for the Gardens. 
 
 He was awaiting her on the seat where, 
 nearly two years ago, the gardener had 
 smiled at them. He stood up as she came 
 slowly towards him, and for a minute they 
 gazed at each other without speaking. 
 
 She was in black, of course, but fresh and 
 dainty-looking, with a bunch of white chiffon 
 at her throat, little tan shoes on her feet, 
 and her hair showing golden against the 
 black of her lace hat. 
 
 For him, his face had altered and har- 
 dened ; the once thick, curling hair was 
 horribly short, his hands were rough and 
 unsightly, his clothes hung awkwardly upon 
 him, and his linen was doubtful. 
 
 " The little Duchess ! " he said, dully ; 
 then he put out his hand, took her small 
 gloved one, and looked at it curiously. 
 
 " I I am glad you're out," she said, 
 carefully looking away from him. 
 
 " Yes we must be married now, Nellie ;
 
 i 4 The Little Duchess. 
 
 that's all I've had to think about all this 
 awful time." 
 
 His face flushed a little and his eyes 
 lightened. 
 
 " It's good not to see the walls," he 
 added, looking round at the spring's brave 
 show, then away to the blue sparkle in the 
 bay and the glancing sails. 
 
 " We mustn't talk of that time, though, 
 ever eh, Nellie ? " 
 
 " No," she said, regarding her brown 
 shoes intently. 
 
 His eye noted the smooth roundness of 
 her cheek, the delicate pink that came and 
 went, the turn of the white neck. 
 
 " Aren't you going to kiss me, Nellie ? " 
 he said, slowly ; and he drew her a little 
 strangely and awkwardly to him. 
 
 Then she spoke. 
 
 " I knew it wouldn't be any use, and 
 you'd never have any money or get a place 
 after this. We couldn't be married on 
 nothing, and it would only drag you down 
 to have me, too. I'm not worthy of you."
 
 The Little Duchess. 15 
 
 "Well, little Duchess," he said, softly, 
 as she stopped and faltered ; a slow smile 
 crept over his face, and his deep -set eyes 
 lighted up with tenderness. 
 
 Not worthy, his little Duchess ! 
 
 Then the crimson rushed into her face, 
 and she flung up her head defiantly. 
 
 " I married the new shop-walker, four 
 months ago ! "
 
 WILKES OF WATERLOO.
 
 Wilkes of Waterloo. i g 
 
 WILKES OF WATERLOO. 
 
 MRS. JOHNSON had just bought an 
 ornament duster from a Chinaman, 
 and little Mrs. Wilkes had stepped over to 
 admire it. 
 
 Mrs. Johnson had no ornaments to dust 
 except an emu's egg and a child's gilt mug, 
 but that was a detail. The duster was 
 composed of soft magenta feathers on a 
 burnished handle, and was a thing of beauty 
 though its price was only eleven-pence. 
 
 " I'd fix it on the wall for a nornmunt," 
 said little Mrs. Wilkes, fingering it affec- 
 tionately. " Wha's it fer, proper ? " 
 
 " Dustin' the chiny and things in a drorin' 
 room," said Mrs. Johnson, who had once 
 been housemaid at Pott's Point. 
 
 Mrs. Wilkes laid it down with a sigh.
 
 20 Wilkes of Waterloo. 
 
 " I wish I'd got one," she said. " Only 
 Wilkes would say 'luven-pence oughter buy 
 a pie-dish or a broom." 
 
 Mrs. Johnson gave a disdainful sniff. 
 
 " Johnson knows his place too well," she 
 said. " Why, he'd never dare remark on it 
 even. Your man wants settin' down a bit, 
 Mrs. Wilkes, as I'm often tellin' you." 
 
 Mrs. Wilkes sighed again. It was a long, 
 deep sigh this time, and comprehended her 
 "man," magenta feather dusters, and an 
 infinitude of things ; but, in the midst of it, 
 the clock at the post office struck six. 
 
 " I've bin 'ere gone an hour," she gasped. 
 " Wilkes gets 'ome at six fer tea." 
 
 Mrs. Johnson followed her to the door 
 and laid a hand on her shoulder. 
 
 " Now, don't you be a little gowk," she 
 said. "'Usbands 'as got to be taught they 
 can't be brutes." 
 
 " Ev course," said Mrs. Wilkes ; but she 
 was trembling. 
 
 " An' if a woman can't step round and 
 see a body, friendly-like, and have a little
 
 Wilkes of Waterloo. 21 
 
 chat, what's the use of not bein' slaves an' 
 'Ottentots, say I ? " 
 
 " Oh, ev course," assented Mrs. Wilkes ; 
 but she twisted herself gently away from 
 her friend's grasp. 
 
 " Ev course, and I'll come round to- 
 morrow, too ; but I'm just wondering like 
 where little Tom is; so I think I'll be goin'." 
 
 She walked slowly and with as much 
 dignity as her little thin figure was capable 
 of till she was well out of sight of Mrs. 
 Johnson's following eyes. Then she broke 
 into a run and sped like a hare up the two 
 back streets to her home, and opened the 
 door with a beating heart. 
 
 Wilkes was home. He was a tremen- 
 dously big man, almost a giant in height 
 and breadth of shoulders, and he seemed 
 to fill the little room. He had a five-year- 
 old boy on his knee, and there was an 
 anxious, tender look on his square, deter- 
 mined face as he looked down on him and 
 wiped away the tears that were flowing 
 down his chubby, dirty cheeks.
 
 22 Wilkes of Waterloo. 
 
 " What's up, Tommie boy ? " said Mrs. 
 Wilkes, creeping in and taking off her 
 bonnet in a shame-faced way. 
 
 Wilkes raised his head and gave her a 
 slow, steady look out of his brown, keen 
 eyes. " W'here've you bin, Em'ly ? " he said 
 quietly. Emily remembered the precepts of 
 Mrs. Johnson, and took courage. 
 
 " It's a pretty thing if a married woman 
 can't slip round and see a friend in a way," 
 she said in a small but determined voice. 
 " I'm not a-goin' to stick in for ever and ever." 
 
 Still Wilkes looked at her in that quiet, 
 strange way, and her eyes drooped and she 
 began fidgeting about the table and straight- 
 ening things for tea. 
 
 Tommie had stopped crying, and his father 
 was brushing the dust off his clothes and 
 looking at a bruise on his arm. 
 
 "What's the matter with 'im?" said 
 Emily, aggrievedly ; "an' look at his nice 
 coat, all torn. I'll beat you Tom, you bad 
 boy, you." W T ilkes stood up and set little 
 Tom on his fest.
 
 Wilkes of Waterloo. 23 
 
 " There was no one home, and he went to 
 play near the station," he said. " He's bin 
 knocked down by a cart." 
 
 "Tom!" shrieked Emily, darting upon 
 her child and gathering him up into her 
 little shaking arms, " Tom, little old 
 Tom oh, Tom, my little baby ! " 
 
 She kissed him and sobbed, and sobbed 
 and kissed him for two or three minutes. 
 
 " He's not hurt," said Wilkes. 
 
 She gave the lad a little shake. " You 
 bad, dis'bedient boy ; ain't I forbid you times 
 and times to play out in the street ? " She 
 brushed some more dust off his sleeve and 
 touched the bruise tenderly. 
 
 " I'm goin' to beat him fer it," said Wilkes, 
 taking down a long, fairly thick strap from 
 the top of the dresser. " You must always 
 obey, Tom, my boy." 
 
 Emily knew from long experience it was 
 worse than useless to protest, so she went to 
 the other side of the dresser and stopped her 
 ears while the beating went on. She was 
 trembling too, but it wasn't for little Tom.
 
 24 Wilkes of Waterloo. 
 
 " There ! " said Wilkes ; and he pushed the 
 screaming child gently into the bedroom ad- 
 joining, and shut the door. " Now, Em'ly." 
 
 " I won't," said Emily, clinging with 
 desperate hands to the dresser. " I'm a 
 growed woman ; I won't be beat, Tom Tom 
 I tell you I won't." 
 
 She faced him, her cheeks white, her eyes 
 blazing. 
 
 " Cum 'ere," said Wilkes quietly. 
 
 " I won't," shrieked Emily. 
 
 He pulled the small clinging hand away 
 from the dresser, and drew her into the 
 middle of the room. 
 
 " I'll tell the perleece I'll get you 'ad up," 
 she sobbed, struggling uselessly. 
 
 " You're my wife, Em'ly girl," he said 
 quietly, " and when you won't do things fer 
 askin', I've got to learn you." 
 
 He administered the beating, sharp enough 
 in its way, and then put the strap high up 
 on the dresser again. 
 
 For a time she sat on the floor with her 
 head on a chair and sobbed convulsively,
 
 
 Wilkes of Waterloo. 25 
 
 little Tom, the other side of the door, chiming 
 dolefully in. Meanwhile Wilkes finished 
 laying the cloth and got everything ready in 
 a quiet, neat fashion : when the kettle boiled, 
 he took down the little brown tea-pot. 
 
 " How much do you use ? " he asked, 
 pausing with the tin in his hand. 
 
 There was a sob from the other end of 
 the room. 
 
 " Em'ly ! " he repeated. 
 
 She raised her head a minute. " Two 
 t t teaspoonsful," she said. 
 
 Little Tom recovered speedily, came out 
 of retirement, and made a cheerful meal of 
 German sausage, with bread and jam for 
 a second course. 
 
 Emily was surprisingly hungry, but would 
 not eat for a long time, though her husband 
 pressed her, and even spread the jam on 
 her bread himself. 
 
 " Don't be sulky, Em," he said, putting 
 it in front of her, and sugaring her tea as 
 she liked it ; " you know I only do it for 
 your own good, old woman."
 
 26 Wilkes of Waterloo. 
 
 But her poor little shoulders were still 
 throbbing badly, and she pushed her plate 
 back in a heart-broken way. 
 
 Presently, however, his tenderness pre- 
 vailed, and she forgave him tearfully, and 
 even ate three slices of bread and melon jam. 
 
 And by the time small Tommie was in 
 bed, and they had washed up and tidied 
 the kitchen between them, they were the 
 
 best of friends again. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 But Mrs. Johnson's influence was not to 
 be so easily undermined. 
 
 The next day Emily did not go round to 
 see her as promised, so she just " stepped 
 up" herself. 
 
 " Well, did Wilkes slate you much for 
 not havin' his tea ready ? " she asked, as 
 she sat down in the spotlessly clean room. 
 
 " Oh, no !" said Emily, in surprise. "Oh, 
 no, he never said a word." 
 
 Tommy looked up from the boxes at 
 which he was hammering. " He beated 
 me," he said, "and then he b "
 
 Wilkes of Waterloo. 27 
 
 " Go and play tram-guards in the yard, 
 Tommie," Emily said, hastily ; and Tommie, 
 after much protesting, departed. 
 
 "Wilkes never touches you, I suppose?" 
 asked the visitor, looking curiously into the 
 little quiet face before her. 
 
 "Oh, lor', no," said Emily. "Gracious 
 me, I should think not. He never laid a 
 finger on me in his life." 
 
 But two days after that Tommie was 
 asked to go and play with Mrs. Johnson's 
 little boy, and there were buns and bananas 
 and other nice things to eat. And Mrs. 
 Johnson, with their kindly help, managed 
 to find out from that transparent little party 
 a true account of what had happened the 
 night in question. She reproached her friend 
 for her want of confidence in her, till Emily, in 
 a weak moment, made a clean breast of it all. 
 
 " Wilkes is so awful big," she said, 
 pitifully, at the end of the recital. " How 
 can I help it ? " 
 
 This was the kind of thing that was as 
 the breath of life to Mrs. Johnson, and she
 
 2 8 Wilkes of Waterloo. 
 
 forthwith set to work to convert this new 
 pupil from the exceeding error of her ways. 
 
 " Show more spirit, my dear. Don't you 
 knuckle under," were her most constant in- 
 junctions, and Emily soon began to show 
 signs of progression. 
 
 She bought a red feather duster and a 
 big bow of pink chiffon instead of paying 
 the baker's bill one week. But Wilkes 
 only shook his head, and asked her plea- 
 santly not to do it again. 
 
 Then she came home late for tea once more, 
 and he was very angry, but only warned her. 
 
 " You must teach 'im a lesson, once and 
 for all," said Mrs. Johnson. " Just assert 
 yourself, my dear assert yourself; that's 
 what you must do." 
 
 " But he'll beat me," said the poor little 
 wife; "an' you don't know 'ow it 'urts." 
 
 Mrs. Johnson deliberated a moment. " If 
 he touches you again, you send for a bobbie. 
 He could be 'ad up for wife beatin,'you know." 
 
 " Oh h h ! " gasped little Mrs. Wilkes. 
 
 " Of course, you wouldn't like him to get
 
 Wilkes of Waterloo. 2g 
 
 long ; but I'll warrant if he was run in for 
 a couple of days, he'd never touch you 
 agen while he lived." 
 
 " Ah h h ! " said little Mrs. Wilkes. 
 
 Three days later there was a picnic a! 
 Botany Sir Joseph Banks' Pavilion, and 
 Emily told her husband, in a defiant kind 
 of way, that she wanted to go. 
 
 " You can't," he said shortly ; " I ain't a 
 goin' to 'ave you gaddin' off with all sorts 
 of folks without me." 
 
 " I shall go," muttered Emily rebellious!]/. 
 
 " Yes, you do," he said warningly, and 
 went off, banging the door behind him. 
 
 Before she had time to think better oi 
 it, Mrs. Johnson came up for her. She 
 dressed herself and little Totnmie very 
 quickly, and sallied forth with great courage. 
 It was seven o'clock before she returned 
 from the day's outing and neared home 
 again. She had drunk several glasses of 
 cheap claret at the picnic, and her silly 
 little head was swimming. 
 
 Mrs. Johnson accompanied her as far a?
 
 3 o Wilkes of Waterloo. 
 
 the door. " Tommie," she said, "if yer 
 pa attempts to beat yer ma to-night, jest 
 you run out and call in a bobbie." 
 
 " All right," said Tommie. He had en- 
 joyed the unlawful pleasure immensely, and 
 had no objection to getting even with "pa" 
 for sundry remembered beatings. 
 
 " I'll be hangin' round," she added, as 
 Emily stopped at her own door and gave 
 a half-frightened glance at the window. 
 " There's a perleece just down the street. 
 I'll see you safely through this ; now's the 
 time to strike for your rights. Just you show 
 'im you've got some spirit, Mrs. Wilkes. 
 Don't you let 'im use you as he likes." 
 
 " Ev course not," said Mrs. Wilkes, open- 
 ing the door and going in with Tommie. 
 
 It was nearly twenty minutes before the 
 door opened, and the little boy slipped out. 
 
 " He's beatin' ma awful, with a big strap," 
 he said to Mrs. Johnson, who had already 
 given the constable to understand that he 
 might be wanted in a particular house 
 before very long.
 
 Wilkes of Waterloo. 3 i 
 
 The three of them went in together 
 the outcry was sufficient to warrant it. 
 
 Wilkes did not take the slightest notice 
 of their entry, but went on using the strap 
 vigorously, and Emily shrieked as if she 
 was being killed. The constable, at her 
 entreaties, made an effort to prevent it, but 
 he was only a slightly-built man. 
 
 Wilkes turned round and looked at him 
 for a second. Then he picked him up 
 quietly by the collar of his coat, put him 
 outside the door, and assisted Mrs. Johnson 
 to the same place. " I'm not half through 
 yet," he said, as he closed it in their faces. 
 
 He had just finished, and replaced the 
 strap on the dresser-top, when they returned 
 with more help and arrested him. 
 
 " You'll have to appear against him to- 
 morrow," said one of the constables to 
 Emily, who was still shrieking with rage, 
 pain, and fright. 
 
 "Rather," she sobbed. "B b big 
 br brute ! " 
 
 * * * *
 
 , 2 Wilkes of Waterloo. 
 
 
 
 The next day went by like a kind of 
 nightmare, and evening found Emily alone 
 with Tommie in the little house. 
 
 She had wept ceaselessly all the time in 
 court, and had at first declared he had 
 never beaten her. But then they reminded her 
 what perjury was, and she admitted that he 
 did sometimes, " but only for my own good." 
 
 The sympathies of the court naturally 
 went with the little frightened -looking 
 woman, with her blue, tear-drowned eyes, 
 rather than with the stubbornly-silent Her- 
 cules in the dock, and they gave him 
 seven days for wife-beating and resisting 
 the constable. Emily had to be carried out 
 of the court in hysterics, and assisted home 
 by the ubiquitous Mrs. Johnson. 
 
 " It'll learn 'im a lesson, it will," the 
 woman said as they reached the door. 
 
 But Emily turned suddenly round, lifted 
 her little, work-marked hand, and struck 
 her across the face. 
 
 " I h h hate you ! " she said, and fled 
 away into the safety of her own house.
 
 Wilkes of Waterloo. 33 
 
 The seventh day came at last, and the 
 tiny house was awaiting its master. The 
 tins, polished to unnatural brilliancy, stood 
 in shining rows ; the dresser was scrubbed 
 to snowy whiteness ; there was a bright fire 
 in the well-blacked grate, and a tempting 
 little feast was spread on the flower-decked 
 table. At one end there were no flowers, 
 and a little space had been cleared for the 
 strap, which lay, like a brown, coiled snake, 
 ready for action. Only Tommie was in 
 charge, for Emily had gone up to Darling- 
 hurst to wait for her husband. 
 
 He stepped out from the great gaol, and 
 a little figure sprang to his side. 
 
 " You ! " he said. 
 
 " Yes, please, Tom ; I've been waiting for 
 you four hours." 
 
 ' Um," he said, and walked on in silence 
 for a long way, trying not to show the glad 
 relief in his face. 
 
 " Aint you comin' 'ome ? " She looked at 
 him anxiously. " Dinner's waitin', Tom 
 dear, and I've got tram tickets all ready."
 
 34 Wilkes of Waterloo. 
 
 Still he walked on in silence. 
 
 " I don't know as there's any use comin' 
 'ome ever again, Em'ly," he said at last. 
 
 She clasped her hands round his old coat 
 sleeve. " Tom," she whispered passionately, 
 and pulled his head down to her, " Tom, 
 you can beat me till you kill me, if you like." 
 
 They caught the Waterloo tram and 
 went the rest of the way in silence. Then 
 Emily opened the door and drew him into 
 the shining, fire-lit room. 
 
 Small Tommie was asleep by the fire 
 and Wilkes glanced at him tenderly. 
 
 "W 7 hen I like, Em'ly?" he said. 
 
 " Yes, yes," she answered eagerly. 
 
 " Now ? " 
 
 She came and stood before him with 
 bent head, and he beat her softly about the 
 shoulders. She looked up at him with 
 smiling, tear-wet eyes. 
 
 " Now put it in the fire, Em'ly," he said. 
 And she took it from him and laid it 
 gently right in the heart of the glowing coals.
 
 AT A STREET CORNER.
 
 At a Street Corner. 
 
 37 
 
 AT A STREET CORNER. 
 
 THE footsteps of the crowd were in his 
 ears, the voices of it, its sighing and 
 its laughter. His fingers lay motionless 
 across the raised letters of the great book 
 on his knees, and his eyes were strained 
 forward, but they saw nothing but his 
 own misery. 
 
 It was the only thing in the heavens 
 above and the earth beneath that he had 
 ever seen. 
 
 They thought he was asleep, the tram- 
 waiting crowd around, for his head had 
 fallen a little forward on to the placard he 
 wore upon his breast, and his lips were 
 quiet. 
 
 And the crowd went home, little by little, 
 till the corner was nearly deserted, but he
 
 3 8 At a Street Corner. 
 
 did not move. Then there came a slow, 
 shuffling step along the foot-path, the step 
 of the old, old man who sold papers daily 
 at the same corner. And the money-box, 
 near the great book, was suddenly grasped 
 by a thin old hand, and the shuffling steps 
 went away rapidly and died in the distance. 
 But the boy sat motionless. Almost a 
 smile parted his lips. 
 
 " No one ever stole from me before," he 
 whispered to himself, and lifted his head 
 a little as if the act had placed him for once 
 on an equality with a world that always 
 pitied. He smiled faintly again. There 
 must be someone in the city as miserable 
 as himself if one had come to such a pass 
 as to steal from him. 
 
 But the next day this mood had passed, 
 and nothing but bitterness was in his heart. 
 
 And When the slow, shuffling step came 
 past again, and he thought of the comfort 
 the stolen money would have brought, a 
 very demon came into him. 
 
 He stood upright in his place, and laid
 
 At a Street Corner. 39 
 
 the money-box and the great book down 
 on the ground ; he took two quick steps 
 in the direction of the slow, shuffling ones, 
 felt for the figure that carried the news- 
 papers, and knocked it heavily down across 
 the pavement. 
 
 The nerves of the crowd were immeasur- 
 ably shocked. The great book lay in the 
 dust ; the old man was slowly raising 
 himself in injured surprise, and there was 
 the blind, young, passionate face before 
 them, or they would have thought their 
 eyes had played them false. 
 
 There was a man of the church amongst 
 them, and he went forward and laid a quiet 
 hand on the boy's sleeve. 
 
 But the young face was still ablaze, and 
 the poor, wild eyes straining forward. 
 
 " Let me go," he said, trying to free 
 himself. 
 
 But the hand still held his sleeve and 
 the colour' dropped from his face again. 
 
 " I am blind," he said, as if the calamity 
 had just come upon him.
 
 4 o At a Street Corner. 
 
 They led him back to his seat and placed 
 him upon it gently, and laid the book on 
 his knees again. 
 
 " Read," the man of the church said 
 softly, and the boy opened the great book 
 and laid his quivering fingers on the 
 first page. 
 
 " And God said, let there be light," 
 he read. 
 
 Then his voice vibrated. 
 
 " And God said, let there be light," 
 he repeated. 
 
 But no one even expected him to finish 
 the sentence.
 
 TO 
 
 THE CITY OF RASPBERRY JAM.
 
 To the City of Raspberry Jam. 43 
 
 TO 
 
 THE CITY OF RASPBERRY JAM. 
 
 " Sydney to Hobart in 53 hours. Large boats. 
 Every possible comfort." Vide Shipping Advertisements. 
 
 IT was on the wharf the Sydney wharf 
 they smelt it first. 
 
 " M m f," said the Person of Import- 
 ance. 
 
 " Hidden Ambrosia," said the Girl with 
 Imagination, gazing raptly at a tarred barrel. 
 
 But " Scrimmy 1 " was the remark the 
 Long-legged Boy made. He had poked an 
 inquisitive penknife through the canvas, and 
 it had come out red with raspberry jam. 
 
 After that they explored the wharf in 
 excitement ; huge cask after cask stood there 
 filled with raspberry jam to the brim. You 
 would have thought all Sydney was going to 
 
 D
 
 44 To the City of Raspberry Jam. 
 
 spread its bread on both sides with the deli- 
 cacy, three meals a day for the next half- 
 year. You would have been afraid Hobart 
 had left itself nothing but empty lanes in its 
 endeavours to satisfy the hungriness of its 
 northern sister. 
 
 It was after noon, almost time for the 
 vessel to start advertised time. But steam- 
 ship companies allow three hours of grace 
 for parting tears occasionally, so ample 
 opportunity was afforded to count the barrels 
 a thousand times and weary of the perfume. 
 And when the third hour came and no start 
 was made, the Long-legged Boy begged 
 leave to translate "jam satis" in the way 
 of his historical schoolfellow. 
 
 The " Oonah " heard him, and moved 
 away with as much dignity as fussiness and 
 foam would allow. 
 
 The wharf fell back, back. Soon it was 
 black and irregular, with little white waving 
 lights that meant " God-speed " and tears 
 possibly "happy riddance." 
 
 Two little girls with flying hair waved
 
 To the City of Raspberry Jam. 45 
 
 energetic farewells to the big house on 
 Kirribilli Point. They were the admiral's 
 daughters, also going Raspberry-land-wards. 
 
 .The Bishops had a jaunty look. They 
 were bent on business, of course the great 
 Church Congress was to be held in the little 
 island-city but there was a nice little 
 holiday stretch between, so they might be 
 allowed to smile. 
 
 The Heads grew less and less important 
 looking. Here were the ocean bays, happy 
 hunting ground of the Sydney picnicker, 
 seen from a new point of view. How the 
 waves leapt against Coogee cliffs ! What 
 a sweep of beautiful beach Bondi showed ! 
 And that little field, white-dotted, that 
 sloped down to the blue waters what was 
 that ? Field glasses were levelled. Hush ! 
 only the little Waverley city of the 
 dead with its thousand gleaming head- 
 stones. 
 
 Laughter on deck, jesting voices, eyes 
 a-brim with purpose and hope, merriment or 
 thoughtfulness life.
 
 4 6 To the City of Raspberry Jam. 
 
 And across there the little white field, 
 asleep for ever. 
 
 Botany Bay. Listen, one of the long 
 black coats is speaking. 
 
 " When Captain Cook first landed here, 
 Sir Joseph Banks, an eminent botanist in 
 the party, was " 
 
 But the Long-legged Boy moves away 
 hurriedly. 
 
 " Page 2, Australian History, Simpson, 
 Mondays and Fridays," he says. " I say, 
 d'ye suppose they ever have dinner on this 
 old tub ? Holy Moses ! Isn't that woman a 
 little premature ? " 
 
 Truly it seemed so. She was a steerage 
 passenger, over on the second deck, and 
 she was crouching against a heap of canvas 
 in an attitude of complete dejection. Her 
 head had fallen sideways, her bonnet was 
 hanging by its strings, she kept a feeble 
 hold of a rope hard by. 
 
 The number of women on any deck has 
 grown small by degrees and beautifully less. 
 
 There is a bell at last. " Only dressing,"
 
 To the City of Raspberry Jam. 47 
 
 groans the Boy with Long Legs ; but 
 soon it rings again. No one makes an 
 elaborate toilet. 
 
 A saloon full of men ; here and there a 
 brave female only here and there. Few 
 smiles, fewer jests ; it is a serious business 
 this first meal. There are a thousand and 
 one strange mingling smells, a moving 
 floor, and a dull thud thud of waves 
 against the wall. It is a time when it is 
 legitimate to take heed to what we shall 
 eat and what we shall drink. See the grave 
 faces bent over menu cards, which might 
 be last wills and testaments of wealthy 
 relatives from the way they are studied. 
 There is a run on boiled fowl, also boiled 
 fish both sound, plain and wholesome, and 
 harmless. 
 
 " Pickled pork, madam ? y yes," says 
 the steward behind the Person of Import- 
 ance. Privately, he does not think much 
 of her complexion ; but to hear is to obey. 
 She tries feebly to tell him it was an extra 
 fork she asked for; but he is gone.
 
 4 8 To the City of Raspberry Jam. 
 
 Then she says wanly, to no one in parti- 
 cular, that she "thinks she will go on deck 
 now, for a little time." 
 
 So she goes, with not an atom more 
 dignity than a Person of No Importance. 
 The Long-legged Boy helps her upstairs 
 not cheerfully, but of necessity. Then he 
 comes back and studies the menu again. 
 The Girl with Imagination is also on deck. 
 She has a far-away look in her eyes. She 
 says she did go down to dinner, but it 
 struck her she was missing the beautiful 
 coast scenery, so she came up again. She 
 talks a little about the blue haze on the 
 hills, and the little leaping waves, and the 
 sunset lights, and then grows pensive again 
 pale, someone said ; but, then, that was 
 the natural effect of imagination. 
 
 A Young Man with a Moustache comes 
 up ; he says he doesn't believe in heavy 
 dinners, and he also mentions his reluctance 
 to miss the coast-line. 
 
 It seems incumbent to discuss heaven and 
 earth, and the musical glasses, but they
 
 To the City of Raspberry Jam. 49 
 
 do so gloomily, and with an unhappy feel- 
 ing of insecurity. 
 
 The Young Man with the Moustache asks 
 if she has read " Trilby." 
 
 The Girl with Imagination thinks of the 
 discussion likely to ensue, and says " No," 
 mendaciously. 
 
 The Young Man speaks of the cleverness 
 of " Some Emotions and a Moral " " What 
 does she think of Cynthia as a specimen of 
 womanhood ? " 
 
 The Girl with Imagination " Has'nt read 
 it " in a tired voice. 
 
 The lights on shore glancing here and 
 there are Bulli, then Wollongong; a wind 
 springs up, and the waves freshen and give 
 joyful little pokes to the boat. There is a 
 long silence, and when the Young Man hears 
 it, he asks if she has read Shakespeare. 
 
 The Girl with Imagination says " No," 
 at first, desperately ; then she remembers 
 Washington's cherry-tree, and adds, " he is a 
 beautiful writer"; then she moves away and 
 stretches herself quite horizontally on a lounge.
 
 5 o To the City of Raspberry Jam. 
 
 Such a swell it is ! The vessel rises and 
 falls, slowly, feelingly ; groups break up, 
 everyone goes to gaze upon the phosphorus, 
 or to lie down flat. 
 
 Overhead the clouds drift up, and put 
 out the twinkling lights, one by one ; the 
 wind waxes stronger, and the waves climb 
 higher and higher up the sides. 
 
 A female figure comes up the companion 
 the stewardess, long-suffering and of great 
 kindness. 
 
 "You must come below, ladies," she 
 says. " It is very late. You will be better 
 in bed." 
 
 The Person of Importance says she is 
 going to stay up all night. 
 
 The Girl with Imagination finds herself 
 thinking longingly of a bed in a churchyard 
 that never moves an inch ; all other beds 
 seem loathly. But the stewardess prevails, 
 and has the satisfaction of tucking up in 
 their berths two of the most miserable women 
 in the world two women who have asked 
 themselves, more in sorrow than in anger,
 
 To the City of Raspberry Jam. 5 i 
 
 why they were ever born, and been unable 
 conscientiously, to reply. 
 
 Morning again ; such a white sea ! Only 
 a few go to look whether the coast-line has 
 run away : the remainder lie prone in their 
 berths and pray for the end. 
 
 Later on a bell rings. It is the dinner 
 bell trying to speak churchfully : in point of 
 fact, as two Bishops are on board, to say 
 nothing of other black coats, there is going 
 to be a church service in the social hall. 
 Sorrow and gloomy meditation have con- 
 vinced a few that they have souls ; so they 
 scrape up the courage necessary to walk 
 across the lurching deck and down the steep 
 companion. There is a scarcity of hymn- 
 books and prayer-books, and to stand steady 
 looks easier than it is. The piano sails 
 along. Two or three who have no books know 
 the words ; the others open their mouths 
 and sing tee-ti-tee-to-tee-too-te-tum in rever- 
 ent tune, and with pious expression. Then 
 the Sydney Bishop gives a short homily, in 
 the midst of which one or two take hurried
 
 52 To the City of Raspberry Jam. 
 
 departures ; perhaps his words went 
 home. 
 
 After that everyone sings " For those in 
 peril on the Sea," and there is a thrill of 
 self-pity in some voices. 
 
 Deck again, the coast-line has vanished 
 altogether ; there is nothing but a " waste of 
 angry billows tossing," as the poetry books 
 put it. 
 
 A hundred and nineteen passengers, and 
 not two among them happy with the happi- 
 ness that belongs to perfect security ! 
 
 The Person of Importance says plaintively 
 she came all the way from England and was 
 not sea-sick for five minutes " horrid little 
 boat." 
 
 Someone with gold buttons says squally 
 weather like this is unheard-of at this time of 
 year, and he is not surprised that even the 
 best sailors succumb ; the short coast trips 
 are far more trying than long voyages. 
 
 The Girl with Imagination respects herself 
 once more, and the Boy with Long Legs eats 
 a passion fruit.
 
 To the City of Raspberry Jam. 53 
 
 The little girl with flying hair brings four 
 of the same dainties from her pocket ; she 
 offers the Bishop a much crinkled one. 
 
 He is sitting on a very high camp stool, 
 with a rug shawlwise over his reverend 
 shoulders, and a macintosh tucked round 
 his gaitered legs. He sucks the fruit with 
 much solemnity, and asks for another. Then 
 he is suddenly "called away," and the 
 smallest girl with flying hair tries not to 
 smile. 
 
 It is Rochefoucauld who says there is 
 something in the misfortunes of our best 
 friends that does not displease us. 
 
 The bell again, quicker and more impor- 
 tunate in sound this time. 
 
 To eat or not to eat, that is the question, 
 Whether 'tis wiser for the sick to suffer 
 The pangs and troubles of a hungry feeling, 
 Or to take food in recklessness and laughter, 
 And, after eating, sorrow. To eat, to grieve ; 
 To grieve ay, there's the rub. 
 
 The saloon tables are not well filled. The 
 steward comes up for deck dinner orders 
 He offers the menu card, but the Person of
 
 54 To the City of Raspberry Jam. 
 
 Importance reads it through with a smile 
 that is sadder than any tears, and orders 
 "biscuits and a tomato." The Girl with 
 Imagination requests a " pillow and a rug," 
 
 You have heard the beat of the off-shore wind 
 And the thresh of the deep-sea rain. 
 
 All the afternoon they swept over the deck, 
 sheets of blown rain, gusts of shrill wind. 
 Everyone has gone down but half a dozen 
 men and the Girl with Imagination. The 
 latter is getting drenched, but she has 
 weighed the cabin and untold misery against 
 a wetting, and decided in favour of clean, 
 wholesome rain. 
 
 How it sweeps down ! It looks for the 
 meeting-place between collars and headdress, 
 and pours chillily in between, and down 
 unhappy backs. The men pull up their 
 collars ; one of them insists that the Girl 
 with Imagination shall go to the lower deck 
 " no place for petticoats," he says. 
 
 But the lower deck ! 
 
 This is Hades, manifest, beholden, 
 Surely, surely here, if aught be sure.
 
 To the City of Raspberry Jam. 55 
 
 Everyone is bad here it is only a matter 
 of degree. From the Bishop to the 
 youngest baby, high and low, great and 
 small, thin and fat they have all abandoned 
 any attempt at keeping up appearances and 
 are abjectly unhappy. 
 
 Darkness again, slow of approach ; no 
 stars to-night nothing but tossing waters 
 and a grey, cloud-swept sky. The morning 
 and evening are the second day. 
 
 Soda water is the great breakfast delicacy 
 the third] day, with or without dry biscuit. 
 It is taken for the most part in the privacy 
 of the cabins. 
 
 " Hunger, I beg to state," 
 
 says the Long-legged Boy after an un- 
 satisfactory visit to the saloon, 
 
 " Is highly indelicate ; 
 
 That is a fact profoundly true, 
 
 So learn your appetite to subdue." 
 
 " What you see," says Carlyle, " yet 
 cannot see over, is as good as infinite." 
 The Girl with Imagination is certain
 
 5 6 To the City of Raspberry Jam. 
 
 there are twenty-four hours to each of the 
 sixty minutes of this third day. 
 
 Four o'clock in the afternoon is getting- 
 up time to the early risers to-day ; more 
 fashionable ones put in their first appear- 
 ance at six. But oh ! such a coast ! New 
 South Wales and Victoria had been soft 
 lines of hills rising and falling, tenderly 
 blue while the sky was fair, and mistily 
 grey through the rains and storms. This 
 is magnificent. 
 
 Straight walls of wild rock dropping sheer 
 into the waves, pillars of dark massiveness, 
 waterworn into a thousand fantastic shapes ; 
 deep sepia shadows, indicating caves ; frown- 
 ing mountains, with their heads near the 
 sky that softens now the day is dying. 
 
 A violet flush creeps up and spreads. 
 Just where the mountain tops tower, it 
 deepens into purple, and the banks of clouds 
 burn gold at the edge. Over the rugged 
 slopes the delicate mists hang, burnished, 
 exquisite, like the filmy, wonderfully embroi- 
 dered bridal veil over a harsh, plain face.
 
 To the City of Raspberry Jam. 57 
 
 Twilight on the waters English twilight, 
 loth to give place to night. All the red 
 and blue gone from the purple, tender, 
 shadowy grey on hills and sky and sea. A 
 sea grown gentle again musical, coaxing ; 
 almost like a child, penitent and sweet and 
 tearful after a stormy burst of anger. 
 
 Then "lights in the darkness, sailor" 
 will-o'-the-wisp lights among the shore 
 trees, a fisherman's boat shooting along the 
 shore, a lantern that shines and disappears. 
 
 More lights, steady-burning and bright. 
 
 The Person of Importance adjourns to 
 her cabin to set her bonnet at the angle 
 orthodoxy insists upon ; the Girl with Imagi- 
 nation puts on one glove and sighs ; the 
 Long-legged Boy enumerates the things he 
 intends to have for supper. 
 
 Flying stewards, wide-awake sailors, pas- 
 sengers unseen all the voyage, an atmo- 
 sphere filled with portmanteaus and cabin 
 boxes, tin trunks and repositories for best 
 hats. 
 
 Nearly in. Black wharves looming out
 
 5 8 To the City of Raspberry Jam. 
 
 on to the paler waters one particular wharf 
 alive with people and lights. 
 
 In she glides, thankfully, alongside. 
 Three times the rope misses; then the 
 Hobart ones catch it, and troubles are over. 
 
 " M m f," says the Person of Import- 
 ance. " M m f, it's the very same 
 smell ; how remarkably strange ! " 
 
 The Girl with Imagination peers into the 
 darkness. She has heard of a land flowing 
 with milk and honey. Possibly this one 
 leaks raspberry jam ? 
 
 But the Long - legged Boy bids her 
 " Stop mooning. To-morrow," he says 
 " to-morrow we'll investigate this smell ; 
 but to-night, for the love of life, let us go 
 and have a tuck-in."
 
 TOYCHILD.
 
 Toychild. 61 
 
 TOYCHILD. 
 
 TOYCHILD sat on the top of the 
 staircase, gnawing thoughtfully at a 
 turnip. It was a remarkably dirty one, 
 but she did not mind that ; her eyes were 
 fixed so intently on the rich red carpet at 
 her feet. 
 
 What was the train of thought in that 
 baby mind it would be hard to guess, but 
 she got up suddenly with a funny little brow- 
 pucker, trotted quickly down the corridor, 
 till, near the servants' quarters, she came to 
 a piece of bare-boarded floor, and then sat 
 down all in a little heap. 
 
 Fanny, Mrs. Mountjoy's smart maid, 
 found her here presently, when only a grimy 
 stump of turnip remained.
 
 62 Toychild. 
 
 " Get up," she said, enforcing the order 
 with a poke of her foot. 
 
 " Go to the dev vil," said Toychild, 
 unmoved. 
 
 Fanny cuffed her smartly on the head 
 and small bare arms, and Toychild kicked 
 and struggled, but uttered no cry. 
 
 "S'posel'll have to dress you before the 
 missus comes," the girl said, subduing her 
 at last, and driving her into a large, beautiful 
 nursery. She pulled off the soiled frock, 
 gave her a hasty soaping and polishing, 
 and slipped on an elaborate silk frock. 
 
 " Now go down, you low little brat, and 
 don't dare get dirty," she said as she finished, 
 " and say, ' Thank you, Fanny ' ; you ill- 
 mannered, common child." 
 
 " Damn you, Fanny, 1 ' said the Poychild. 
 Then she laughed a shrill, baby laugh and 
 fled downstairs as fast as her wee legs 
 would carry her. 
 
 It is rather a curious name, Toychild, is 
 it not ? Mr. Mountjoy, however, had 
 bestowed it himself upon her, and surely,
 
 Toychild. 63 
 
 seeing he had bought her, he had a right to 
 choose her name. 
 
 She had other ones, of course. Mrs. 
 Mountjoy called her Gladys Claribel, and 
 the child herself sometimes persisted piteously 
 and tearfully that her name was Nan. 
 
 Mr. Mountjoy's name was really the most 
 applicable ; however, for a toychild she was, 
 and, it seemed, ever would be, and this is 
 how the thing had happened. 
 
 In one of the seasons when the world 
 considers it the correct thing to be out of 
 town, Mrs. Mountjoy, killing time at a 
 mountain hotel, met in her walk a tiny 
 bare-legged child, so wonderfully pretty and 
 engaging, that she was enchanted. She 
 hunted up the mother, and found her a 
 poor young thing of twenty-seven, with 
 tear-sodden eyes and the mark of a blow 
 across her cheek. 
 
 The child she admired was only one of six. 
 
 Mr. Mountjoy, at his wife's entreaty, 
 entered into negotiations for the child with 
 the husband, a rough, drunken fellow. He
 
 64 Toychild. 
 
 would adopt the child, bring her up in luxury 
 and give them fifty pounds down (he often 
 gave double that for a horse) to start them 
 again in life. 
 
 The man agreed eagerly, and even the 
 mother, after a few hopeless, miserable 
 tears, nodded her assent. What chance had 
 she to make the child happy ? "I cannot 
 allow any communication the new life must 
 have no connection with the old," Mrs. 
 Mountjoy had said. 
 
 Again the mother cried a little; then she 
 put her poor, white lips to the child's 
 mountain bloom, kissed her fiercely, hungrily, 
 despairingly, and pushed her across to her 
 new parents. 
 
 And that is how little Nan became " Gladys 
 Claribel," and the " Toychild." 
 
 Of course, Mrs. Mountjoy grew tired of 
 her. She had wearied of her toy-terrier in 
 a fortnight, her pony phaeton in a month, 
 her riding horse in two. Nan lasted three 
 months, and then spent long days in the 
 beautiful nursery that had been fitted up,
 
 Toychild. 
 
 or in wandering about the big house, chased 
 from place to place by the maid Fanny, who 
 highly resented the extra work involved by 
 a " beggar's brat." 
 
 Mr. Mountjoy had not tired so soon, but, 
 then, he had not lavished undivided atten- 
 tion and worship upon her for two or 
 three months, so his fire might be expected 
 to burn a little longer. 
 
 He liked to have her follow him about the 
 house like a pet spaniel, and ask funny little 
 questions, and swear back at him in the way 
 he had taught her. As soon as she grew 
 obstreperous, he would say, 
 
 " Here, Fanny, put your mistress's toy 
 away, the paint's coming off." 
 
 And Mrs. Mountjoy would flush vexedly 
 at the sarcasm, and, perhaps for conscience 
 salve, have her in her room while she 
 dressed for a dinner or a ball. 
 
 Just now she was riding a Theosophy 
 hobby to a rapid death, and found Nan an 
 unmitigated bore. She wanted to get rid of 
 her, any way, any how, and suggested that
 
 66 Toychild. 
 
 the child should be packed off back to her 
 mountain home. 
 
 But Mr. Mountjoy would not hear of it. 
 It went against his principles to part with a 
 fifty - pound investment after barely three 
 mo'nths' use. There was the nursery, be- 
 sides, and the toys and the clothes it would 
 be a clear loss. 
 
 Nan had been first delighted, then be- 
 wildered, in her new home ; then she drooped, 
 lost her high spirits and bewitching little 
 ways, and the days of neglect began. 
 
 The big rooms and splendid furniture 
 seemed to oppress her poor little soul ; the 
 wonderful frocks and shoes made her un- 
 comfortable, the handsome ^dolls and 
 mechanical toys frightened her. She began 
 to creep into the kitchen or yard they had 
 something familiar about them and she 
 evinced a passionate attachment to a washer- 
 woman who came weekly, till Mrs. Mount- 
 joy discovered it, and immediately sought to 
 break it off, complaining vexedly of the 
 child's low leanings.
 
 Toychild. 67 
 
 That turnip had been a wonderful source 
 of consolation to her to-day. She had found 
 it in the dust-bin, and hidden it down the 
 front of her muslin frock from the lynx eyes 
 of Fanny. 
 
 It had a familiar, beautiful look. 
 " Mover," who stood over steaming wash- 
 tubs all day, used often to give a huge 
 turnip to baby to stop it crying, and 
 Mikey and Tim and she used to creep round 
 and steal it. 
 
 " Mikey an" Tim an' Molly an' Nan, 
 Eat yer pertaters out a tin can," 
 
 said Toychild in a little sing-song voice, as 
 she rocked herself to and fro on the top 
 chair, and sharpened her small white teeth 
 on the turnip. She sang it again 
 
 " Mikey an' Tim an' Molly an' Nan, 
 Eat yer p-p-pertaters out a tin c-can." 
 
 Then the round, grey eyes took a wild 
 "remembering" expression, her underlip 
 drooped piteously, ard she ran down the 
 passage to the patch of bare, familiar boards.
 
 68 Toychild. 
 
 " Mover ! " she cried, with a little fright- 
 ened gasp. 
 
 Soon the recollection faded, and she 
 cuddled herself together and gnawed away 
 cheerfully at her turnip. 
 
 Now Fanny had disturbed and dressed ' 
 her, and she was wandering forlornly about 
 the hall. The drawing-room was forbidden 
 ground Mrs. Mountjoy had slapped her 
 bare little arms for breaking a china orna- 
 ment there ; in the dining-room a Japanese 
 butler was setting the table, and she was 
 afraid of him ; the servants all chased her 
 out of the kitchen, and there was no garden. 
 
 A big Persian cat, prime favourite at 
 present, crept out of the drawing-room, 
 stretched himself and yawned once he had 
 scratched her. 
 
 A vicious feeling took possession of Toy- 
 child's breast. She would punish him. He 
 began to wash himself amiably, blinking 
 kzily at her the while. She swooped down 
 on him and gathered him up in a determined 
 fashion. He scratched her little, soft arms
 
 Toychild. 69 
 
 horribly, he spat and hissed, but she gripped 
 him with Spartan courage, struggled to the 
 goldfish bowl that stood in the outer hall, 
 and flopped him in. 
 
 " There ! " she said, and her grey eyes 
 danced. 
 
 But " There ! " snapped the cat ; and he 
 brought the bowl crashing to the floor, ate 
 a couple of gold-fish, and retired kitchen- 
 wards to dry. 
 
 " Hum," said Toychild, thoughtfully. 
 Then she dragged an umbrella from the 
 stand it was raining and slipped out at 
 the open hall door. 
 
 It was much nicer in the street. She 
 unfurled the umbrella it was Mr. Mount- 
 joy's, a regular tent managed to snap it 
 in some way, and went sailing down the 
 road. Such a wee, comical figure, with 
 brown, tumbled curls, all wet with rain- 
 drops, and round eyes ashine with adventure ; 
 with naked little arms clasped tightly round 
 the stick of the wind-filled umbrella, and 
 be-socked little legs, struggling to keep a
 
 7 o Toychild. 
 
 firm hold on the slippery pavement. No 
 wonder people looked and smiled. 
 
 Two ladies stopped suddenly. " Why, 
 it's little Gladys, the child Mrs. Mountjoy 
 has adopted ! " 
 
 Toychild tried to push on. 
 
 " You must come home, Gladys, you'll 
 be lost ! Come, we will take you to the 
 door." One lady put a detaining arm round 
 the small waist. 
 
 " Damn you ; go to the dev-vil ; tonfound 
 you ; bress my soul ! " said the Toychild, 
 struggling desperately. One lady looked 
 horrified ; the other held the child firmly. 
 
 " It's that Mountjoy, he teaches her, 
 poor little mite ! Here is his wife's car- 
 riage we will stop it." 
 
 In a couple of minutes the umbrella was 
 down, and Toychild bundled into the car- 
 riage with her new parents, who were 
 driving home from the races. Mrs. Mount- 
 joy scolded her fretfully, Mr. Mountjoy 
 looked at her gloomily, and then swore at 
 his wife. He had lost heavily on a favourite
 
 Toychild. 71 
 
 horse, and the sight of the expensive toy 
 irritated him. 
 
 In the hall all was confusion, the floor 
 was strewn with broken glass and ferns, 
 gold and silver fish lay palpitating on the 
 tiles ; several of the servants were standing 
 about, and the Persian cat, with a vin- 
 dictive expression on his face, went and 
 rubbed his wet body against Mrs. Mount- 
 joy's skirts. Toychild tried to efface herself 
 behind a chair. 
 
 " It's all that young imp," began 
 Fanny. 
 
 Mr. Mountjoy pushed the small offender 
 aside till she staggered giddily. 
 
 " Take her away, and punish her," he 
 said ; " and leave in a week yourself for 
 not minding her." 
 
 Shrieking and swearing her very best, 
 the child was borne off through the kitchens 
 and out into the stable-yard, where her 
 noise could not disturb the mistress. 
 
 Miss Fanny wreaked upon her a woman's 
 angry spite, beating her poor little body,
 
 72 Toychild. 
 
 and leaving her alone to sob out her small 
 heart in the darkness. 
 
 The next day, and the next and next, life 
 went on as usual for Toychild, only there 
 were strange shadows round the grey, childish 
 eyes, and the soft under-lip got a habit of 
 trembling and twitching oddly. 
 
 She abandoned the smart, smiling wax 
 images in the nursery, and bestowed all the 
 affection of her hungry little heart on a 
 dirty rag-doll she had made from dusters, 
 and kept carefully out of Fanny's sight. 
 
 And every day she would watch her 
 opportunity, and steal into the laundry, 
 and, with the rag bundle hugged closely to 
 her, would creep into one of the tubs and 
 cuddle up close to its cold side. 
 
 " Mikey an' Tim, an' Molly an' Nan, 
 Eat yer pertaters out a tin can." 
 
 Every day she would sing the doll this 
 lullaby, and every day the soft eyes would 
 grow round and frightened, and the yearn- 
 ing little cry go up to the laundry roof 
 " Mover, oh ! Mover."
 
 Toy child. 73 
 
 The air-spirits could endure it no longer. 
 They bore the broken, baby voice away 
 up, up, where tall gums and wattle grew 
 round a tumble-down cottage. 
 
 One day, a young shabby-looking woman, 
 with a tear-sodden face, and the mark of a 
 fresh blow across it, stole with uncertain 
 step through the yard to the back door 
 of the Mountjoy's town residence. 
 
 There was no one about ; not even a 
 servant of whom she might ask tidings of 
 the child for whom her heart was aching. 
 
 She lifted her hand to knock at the half- 
 open laundry door. Hush ! what was that 
 soft little sing-song voice inside ? 
 
 " Mikey an' Tim, an' Molly an' Nan. 
 Eat yer pertaters out a tin can." 
 
 " Dod bress my soul tonfound you ; 
 damn you, Mounty, go to the dev-vil. Oh, 
 mover ! " 
 
 Mr. Mountjoy was standing within the 
 stable after giving an order about a sick 
 horse, when he saw an ill-dressed woman 
 creep stealthily down the yard, looking with
 
 74 Toychild, 
 
 wild, affrighted eyes from side to side, as 
 if fearful of pursuit, and hugging a great 
 bundle covered with a shawl. 
 
 " Some of the plate, I'll be bound," he 
 muttered, taking a stride forward. The 
 next minute he laughed silently and fell 
 back. 
 
 Below the shawl hung a wee, sturdy leg, 
 with its white lace sock and small red shoe. 
 He looked up and recognised the woman's 
 face. She gained the gate, opened it trem- 
 blingly, fearfully, closed it behind her silently, 
 and fled away into the dark, falling shadows. 
 He made no movement to follow her. 
 
 " Stealing her own child ! " he muttered 
 the hungry, desperate look on her face 
 haunted him " poor beggar ! " 
 
 Then he ordered a hot mash for the horse., 
 and went inside to tell his wife.
 
 A MODERN ACHILLES.
 
 A Modern Achilles. 77 
 
 A MODERN ACHILLES. 
 
 JOAN was writing letters on pale pink 
 notepaper. She had finished three, and 
 there were nine more to be done. The 
 corners of her mouth were drooping, there 
 was an unhappy look in her eyes, and a dab 
 of ink on the end of her nose. 
 
 " If it wasn't for my new muslin, I would 
 try to bear it stoically," she said, and 
 smudged a line with her sleeve ; " but 
 the thought of the wasted labour in those 
 frills will embitter my whole existence 
 bother ! " 
 
 The concluding expletive was called forth 
 by the sight of the smudge. 
 
 " If only the jellies weren't made," Ella 
 said. " That's what I mind most. That 
 pineapple one was really beyond everything."
 
 7 8 A Modern Achilles. 
 
 In the armchair there was a wet hand- 
 kerchief and a crumpled girl in a short 
 frock. 
 
 " It's wicked," she said ; " it's cruel. The 
 only pleasure of my holidays. I've dreamed 
 about it every night. And school next week. 
 No boats, or twos and threes, or rounders, 
 or anything." 
 
 Every word was a tear. 
 
 "Bother! " 
 
 Joan had smudged another sheet. She 
 pushed the desk away pettishly. " I'm not 
 going to write any more of the horrid 
 things ! " 
 
 " If only you weren't such prudes," the 
 girl in the armchair said. " Do you imagine 
 you're in a box, and all Australia's levelling 
 its opera-glasses at you who'd care ? " 
 
 Joan gave her an exasperated look. 
 
 " You're only a silly schoolgirl, Thea 
 think of the people we've asked ! Why, the 
 Delany girls would faint at the idea of a 
 picnic without a chaperone. There's no help 
 for it. Do you think I'm not as disappointed
 
 A Modern Achilles. 79 
 
 as you are ? " Thea made her handkerchief 
 a little wetter, and her eyes a deeper red. 
 Joan's reluctant pen scratched away again. 
 Ella's jelly - regretful sighs floated about 
 the room. 
 
 The picnic they had planned and dreamed 
 of, cooked for, lived for, must at the last 
 moment be declared "off." 
 
 The lady who was to have chaperoned the 
 party had been inconsiderate enough to 
 sprain her ankle just when all arrangements 
 were completed. 
 
 Even the jellies were made, the pantry was 
 full of cakes and delectables, and Joan had 
 almost worn out the machine in her haste 
 to finish an ethereal confection of muslin 
 and lace. 
 
 Try as they would they could not fill up 
 the place. The picnic was for Boxing Day, 
 and among all their acquaintances in the 
 district there was not one married lady 
 obligingly disengaged enough to come and 
 play propriety for them at such short notice. 
 
 Their father and mother had gone for a
 
 8o A Modern Achilles. 
 
 Christmas trip to Tasmania, and had given 
 permission for the picnic, providing only that 
 it was suitably chaperoned. They had invited 
 the guests a couple of officers from a man-o'- 
 war in the harbour, an Englishman " doing " 
 Australia, with a drawl and a beautiful 
 moustache, a young squatter, a bank clerk, 
 and several girls, the daughters of very con- 
 ventional neighbours. Clearly they could 
 not go without a lady of a certain age, more 
 especially as it would be a public holiday, 
 and the Parramatta River, whither they were 
 bound, would be alive with holiday-makers. 
 
 " I'd like to know what good they do," 
 Thea said, in a voice so withering that even 
 her tears checked themselves. " Why, last 
 holidays, at the Gresham's picnic, there were 
 three chaperones ; but it didn't prevent our 
 Jack from squeezing Nellie Alton's hand, for 
 I saw him." 
 
 " Our Jack " entered just in time to catch 
 the last sentence, and to project a sofa 
 cushion at the speaker. Had he not laughed 
 and spoken, they would all have risen, and
 
 A Modern Achilles. 81 
 
 acted politely to him as to a stranger. Instead, 
 they screamed at him, danced about, laughed 
 uncontrollably, ceased for a minute, and 
 laughed again. 
 
 " Sheep dog, at your service," he said, and 
 minced across the room. He was dressed in 
 a long, handsome skirt of his mother's, with 
 a fashionable jacket, left unbuttoned, and a 
 boa of black lace around his neck. 
 
 There was a grey, amazingly natural- 
 looking wig on his head, and surrounding it 
 a black jet bonnet, with an aigrette and long 
 strings. A veil and pair of eye-glasses, a 
 few deftly-painted wrinkles, and a languid 
 smile completed his " get up." 
 
 " I'm going to see you through, girls," he 
 said, as soon as he could put in a word 
 edgeways between their laughter and excla- 
 mations. 
 
 Thea fell upon his neck, regardless of the 
 diffident security of the bonnet. 
 
 " You darling," she sobbed ; " oh, you dear 
 boy ! you trump ! you brick, Jack ! " 
 
 Then she walked over to the writing-table,
 
 8 2 A Modern Achilles. 
 
 took possession of the pink, regretful post- 
 ponements, and calmly dropped them into the 
 water of a great bowl of roses, seeing there 
 was no fire at hand, the thermometer being 
 at 98 degrees. 
 
 And that was how it happened that the 
 party was chaperoned by a clean-shaved 
 boy of twenty-two. They introduced him 
 as Aunt Emmelina, and he bowed beauti- 
 fully or shook their hands gently, and 
 murmured correct little society nothings. 
 
 It came natural to him to do it well, for he 
 was an inimitable mimic and one of the best 
 amateur actors in Sydney. 
 
 But, at first, Aunt Emmelina considered 
 she had been unfairly used. 
 
 The girls had said Esther Hardress, the 
 present goddess of their brother's somewhat 
 mutable affections, could not possibly come, 
 as she had caught the measles from her 
 little brother, and was in bed. That was 
 the reason he had been willing to give up 
 his own pleasure, and do his best for his 
 sisters, for he did not consider any of the
 
 " Mv dear friend Esther, Aunt Emmeline.' " 
 
 [Page 83.
 
 A Modern Achilles. 83 
 
 other girls who were invited worth his 
 attention. But when the morning came and 
 the people began to assemble at the big 
 house on the hill, in walked Esther, in a cool 
 white dress and a sailor hat. 
 
 Aunt Emmelina, talking to the Delany 
 girls at the end of the verandah, took a 
 sudden stride from them and knocked down 
 a hamper. The bank clerk and the squatter 
 rushed politely to pick it up, and she said, 
 " Thanks, old fellow," to the latter, and 
 then tried to cough away the end of her 
 sentence. 
 
 " You little sneak, Joan ! " he said, in a 
 fierce whisper, as his sister nudged his arm, 
 and said " Be careful " with her eyes. " I'll 
 get even with you for this." 
 
 Joan introduced them. " My dear friend 
 Esther, Aunt Emmelina." 
 
 " I heard you had the measles, my dear," 
 Aunt Emmelina said in a thin, old voice. 
 She retained the hand, in its white suede 
 glove, with all the tender solicitude of a 
 chaperone of forty years' standing.
 
 8 4 A Modern Achilles. 
 
 "Oh, no ; it was Edith who caught them 
 my sister, not I," Esther said. 
 
 She managed to get her hand away, and 
 moved across the verandah, to be instantly 
 surrounded by the officers and the bank 
 clerk. 
 
 Aunt Emmelina went through the French 
 window into the breakfast - room, a sulky 
 look on her nice old face. Joan was there 
 putting some bottles of claret into a hamper. 
 
 " I've a great mind to chuck it all up," 
 he said angrily. " Making a fool of me 
 like this ! Why didn't you tell me she 
 was coming ? " 
 
 Joan caught his arm, hung on to it, im- 
 ploring him not to give up now. " We shall 
 be the laughing-stock of the whole neigh- 
 bourhood, Jack," she said, and there were 
 real tears in her eyes." 
 
 Somebody called her, and she hurried out. 
 
 Aunt Emmelina stood in moody silence, 
 her back to the fireless grate. Thea came 
 in, all arms and legs and beaming smiles. 
 
 " Where's your corkscrew ? " she said.
 
 A Modern Achilles. 85 
 
 " Why, what's the matter, Jack ? " The last 
 word was whispered. 
 
 " Oh, confound it all ! " Aunt ^Emmelina 
 said, and pushed up her veil regardless of 
 consequences. 
 
 Thea went up to him and put her lips to 
 his ear. 
 
 " It's Esther, is'nt it ?" she said. 
 
 " Mind your business," he answered, and 
 turned sharply on his heel, forgetful of his 
 dress tail. 
 
 But Thea followed him up. 
 
 " Sometimes chaperones kiss the girls 
 good-bye," she whispered, and fled out again 
 among the others. 
 
 Aunt Emmelina put her veil down care- 
 fully, arranged her curls with diligence, 
 and set her bonnet straight. There was a 
 smile in her eyes behind the glasses. After 
 all, there might be some enjoyment in the 
 position. 
 
 Esther had evinced careless disregard for 
 his ardent admiration lately, though once 
 she had received it almost graciously.
 
 86 
 
 A Modern Achilles. 
 
 As " Jack," he would have been pushed 
 aside to make room for the squatter, of 
 whom he had suspicions, for the officers 
 even for the bank clerk. 
 
 As " Aunt Emmelina," he might have the 
 felicity of touching that white, beautiful 
 hand of hers often ; he might even put his 
 arm round her waist in a motherly kind 
 of way. 
 
 And Thea was quite right. He had seen 
 chaperones take quite an affectionate leave 
 of their young charges at the end of a day. 
 
 So they set out. And surely in all the 
 annals of chaperonedom there had never 
 been quite such a charming, gentle, enter- 
 taining old lady as Aunt Emmelina. 
 
 They gave her the most comfortable seat 
 at the end of the boat, and the squatter 
 arranged her sunshade with great care. 
 
 " Come and sit here, my dear," she said, 
 as Esther was guided carefully into the boat 
 by the bank clerk. " Come and tell me 
 about poor little brother." 
 
 Esther took the place rather unwillingly.
 
 A Modern Achilles. 87 
 
 She had promised to sit on the same seat as 
 the squatter, while the bank clerk rowed. 
 Still, a chaperone has her privileges, and she 
 was obliged to sit where requested, and talk 
 measles with her. 
 
 There were three other boats, and Jack 
 had seen that the good rowing men were 
 equally distributed in them. In his own, 
 however, the bank clerk was a very poor 
 oarsman, and the squatter a great deal out 
 of practice, so they were left somewhat 
 behind. 
 
 They had started from Longnose, and were 
 to go almost to the head of the river. 
 
 But the squatter had an unbalanced mind 
 whenever Esther was anywhere near, and 
 the bank clerk was in desperation at the 
 untoward behaviour of the oars. 
 
 So it was hardly to be wondered at that 
 they got into a mess before they reached 
 their destination. 
 
 Just past Hunter's Hill a great sailing 
 boat came bearing down upon them, and a 
 steamer was close behind, but no one had
 
 88 A Modern Achilles. 
 
 noticed such details until it was almost 
 too late. 
 
 Then the bank clerk grew pale and 
 splashed frantically with his oars, and the 
 girl with the steering lines lost her head, and 
 forgot which side she should pull. The 
 younger Delany girl, with beautiful wisdom, 
 stood up in her place and screamed. Esther 
 gave a little gasp and clung to the friendly 
 arm beside her. But Aunt Emmelina thrust 
 her roughly aside, and almost fell across the 
 boat to the middle seat. She swept the 
 bank clerk out of his place into a feeble, 
 astonished heap, seized the oars, and wkh a 
 couple of powerful strokes swung the boat 
 round out of danger. Afterwards the bank 
 clerk had a confused remembrance of being 
 called "a confounded young idiot," and 
 he resented it with an air of dignified sur- 
 prise toward the chaperone for the rest 
 of the day. He had old-fashioned notions 
 of his own about women, and considered 
 "dash it" and "bother" the extremest 
 limit to which their language of exasperation 
 might go.
 
 A Modern Achilles. 89 
 
 Aunt Emmelina resigned the oars to the 
 squatter when they were in clear water 
 again, and seemed much troubled because 
 she had burst her black kid gloves. She 
 smiled at the surprise of the party at her 
 act, and said simply she had been used 
 to the management of boats since her 
 earliest youth. 
 
 The morning passed as does the time at 
 most picnics ; they all did many things in 
 general and nothing in particular, and waited 
 for lunch to dissipate the slight air of 
 restraint that not infrequently hangs over 
 picnickers till chicken and salad, claret cup, 
 and conversation peppermints, intrusive ants, 
 and the paucity of plates do their genial 
 work. 
 
 But when the meal was over, Aunt 
 Emmelina felt very much what is popularly 
 known as " out of it." 
 
 Esther was lingering over a bit of custard 
 roll, and out of aggravation directing her 
 conversation towards Miss Delany, and the 
 squatter was lingering over Esther, and
 
 go A Modern Achilles. 
 
 wishing Miss Delany at a further place. 
 Joan was talking picnic nonsense with the 
 two officers. One boat containing two people 
 had already drifted away, and the bank clerk 
 was persuading two girls to entrust them- 
 selves to the boat and his tender mercies 
 again. 
 
 Aunt Emmelina was dying for a smoke. 
 
 If she could have talked to Esther she 
 would have sacrificed the desire, but, as it 
 was, she merely anathematised the squatter, 
 and kept fingering the pipe and tobacco 
 pouch she had carefully put in her pocket, 
 till she could resist no longer. 
 
 " Would you like to come out in a boat 
 with me, my child ? " she said, at last, gently 
 to Thea, who was feeling somewhat ex- 
 hausted after a prolonged attack upon cream 
 cakes. 
 
 The little girl got up and followed her 
 brother rather in surprise, and they pushed 
 off together. Everyone remarked how well 
 the old lady pulled, and Ella waved a re- 
 lieved farewell from the shore. She was on
 
 A Modern Achilles. gi 
 
 tenterhooks all the time, on account of the 
 vagaries of her " aunt." They soon passed 
 the first boat ; and when some distance away, 
 Aunt Emmelina rowed at a rate that would 
 fairly have electrified the picnickers could 
 they have seen. 
 
 Then she gave the oars to Thea, subsided 
 into the bottom of the boat, lighted her pipe, 
 and had a luxurious smoke that soothed her 
 injured feelings and ruffled nerves into 
 placidity again. 
 
 " It isn't many brothers would do what 
 I've done for you girls," she said, as Thea 
 pulled back again some hours later. " There's 
 Esther letting that fat-headed Barton dangle 
 after her all the time. I might have had 
 a chance if it wasn't for these wretched 
 petticoats." 
 
 He got out, and tied up the boat at a post 
 on the little shingly beach without waiting 
 for assistance. 
 
 " But fat-head Barton can't wish her good- 
 bye like you can," Thea whispered again in- 
 sinuatingly. 
 
 G
 
 9 2 A Modern Achilles. 
 
 Two or three of the girls, Esther among 
 them, had strolled some distance away and 
 were standing on a boulder, idly throwing 
 stones in the dancing water and watching 
 the circles. The men were lounging around, 
 smoking cigars, among the hampers, and 
 talking to the other girls who had declared 
 it was too hot to stir. 
 
 Thea rummaged about and found some 
 bananas. She offered the squatter one, and 
 kept three for herself, and they were all 
 laughing and proposing a more equitable 
 division, when a frightened scream broke 
 the hot, quiet air over the river. Everyone 
 sprang up and looked in the direction of 
 the sound. Two of the girls were running 
 frantically about, and the third was strug- 
 gling in the water. 
 
 They all knew by the sailor hat bobbing 
 about that it was Esther. 
 
 The squatter gave an answering shout, 
 and started running at a great rate, taking 
 off his coat as he went. But Aunt 
 Emmelina shot along in front of him;
 
 A Modern Achilles. 93 
 
 her skirts were gathered up in a rough 
 bunch under one arm, her bonnet hung 
 down her back by the strings, her glasses 
 tumbled off, her hair wobbled about and fell 
 in a grey mass over her shoulders. For one 
 second, when she reached the rock, she tried 
 to get rid of her cumbersome skirt, but the 
 hooks resisted her, and she sprang straight 
 into the river with a flop that might have 
 been heard a quarter of a mile away. 
 
 But the squatter had caught up, too, and 
 precipitated himself into the water ; and now 
 it was a question of who could reach Esther 
 first, for she had floated some distance out. 
 Jack knew himself to be no mean swimmer, 
 but the skirts tangled his feet, and the tight 
 jacket held his arms. The squatter was 
 only a few yards behind : Jack struck out 
 wildly and made rapid pace. But some- 
 body seized him under the arms as he 
 struggled for a moment to free himself from 
 the jacket. 
 
 It was one of the officers, a better swim- 
 mer than either of them.
 
 94 A Modern Achilles. 
 
 " My dear madam," he panted, holding 
 him in a firm grip and trying to swim back 
 with him, " Put your hand on my arm so." 
 
 But Jack struggled madly away, and 
 made two more strokes, only to be caught 
 by the officer and fairly dragged back. 
 
 " Mr. Barton will save the young lady. 
 Do you want to drown yourself, madam ? " 
 The officer spoke in a tone of exasperated 
 patience, for he thought the chaperone was 
 a mild lunatic. 
 
 " Drown your grandmother ! " spluttered 
 Jack, swallowing a pint of water, as he freed 
 himself. " Can't you see who I am ? " 
 
 The squatter was ahead of him ; he trod 
 water for a second, and flung off the jacket 
 that bound his arms. 
 
 He saw Esther was keeping herself afloat 
 without much difficulty, and he resolved he 
 would take her to the shore himself, or die 
 in the attempt. 
 
 He gained on the squatter ; he received 
 the splash from his circling boots full in the 
 face, and the temptation for water-leapfrog
 
 A Modern Achilles. 95 
 
 was too strong to be resisted. He trod water 
 again, came up behind his enemy, planted 
 his feet on his shoulders, and sent him 
 downward with the greatest goodwill and 
 energy. Half-a-dozen more strokes and he 
 was alongside Esther. 
 
 " Jack oh ! dear Jack oh ! Jack ! " she 
 said, hysterically, as his wet, beaming face 
 bobbed up beside her head, which she was 
 trying to keep flat on the water in floating 
 position. 
 
 " It's all right, little girl," he said, re- 
 assuringly. " Everything's all right now. 
 You're as safe as a church." 
 
 But she lost her presence of mind for a 
 minute in her relief. He bade her put her 
 arm on his shoulder, and she put them 
 both without reserve round his neck. 
 
 " It's an ill wind that blows no " he 
 
 murmured, but the rest of the sentence was 
 mingled with water. 
 
 He managed, however, to get to shore 
 without much trouble, for she floated 
 obediently, and he towed her.
 
 96 A Modern Achilles. 
 
 The squatter had just clambered up a 
 slippery rock, and was looking sulky, and 
 the officer was shaking himself dry. 
 
 There was a general roar of laughter as 
 Jack climbed out and lifted Esther from the 
 water, little the worse for her adventure. 
 He had left his bonnet, wig, and jacket in 
 the water, and appeared in a white flannel 
 shirt and long, dripping skirts. 
 
 Joan unfastened the hooks, and he kicked 
 them off and stood before them attired in 
 his boating flannels. 
 
 " Thank heaven ! " he said, with pious 
 fervour. He peeled off the remains of his 
 split gloves and joined in the laughter. 
 Then an adjournment was made for drying 
 purposes to a cottage close by, and Esther 
 submitted without protest to the supporting 
 arm of her rescuer. The rest of the day 
 was confusion and merriment, but there were 
 five white minutes at the end that spread 
 out afterwards over the whole lives of two 
 people. 
 
 " How can I ever thank you ? " Esther
 
 A Modern Achilles. 
 
 97 
 
 said, and blushed beautifully, for she knew 
 quite well the way she could. 
 
 " In a book," Jack whispered, " the hero 
 and heroine would be sure to marry after 
 such an adventure, and live happily to the 
 end of their lives." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Esther. 
 
 " And the heroine would be absolutely 
 certain to reward the hero with a kiss." 
 
 " Ah ! " said Esther. 
 
 The boyish face, full of anxious love, was 
 close to her own. 
 
 " After all, it's only Aunt Emmelina," she 
 said with a little trembling laugh as her lips 
 touched it. Then she fled away down the 
 garden path after the others. 
 
 He went into the house again, giddy with 
 his sudden happiness. 
 
 "What did I tell you?" said Thea, 
 dropping the corner of the window blind 
 with a triumphant smile.
 
 ON A PENNY FERRY.
 
 On a Penny Ferry 101 
 
 ON A PENNY FERRY. 
 
 " And now if e'er by chance I put 
 My fingers into glue, 
 
 Or madly squeeze a right-hand foot 
 Into a left-hand shoe, 
 I weep, for it reminds me so." 
 
 SOMEONE was giving an afternoon tea 
 party on " The Shore," and it pro- 
 mised to be an unusually solemn and impor- 
 tant affair. 
 
 No one masculine had been asked who was 
 not figuratively or visibly long-haired; and 
 no one feminine who had not a faint ink- 
 stain on her right-hand fore-finger and a 
 belief in Spiritualism in her soul. Naturally, 
 nothing but conversation was to be indulged 
 in, and strawberry ices and the latest thing 
 in sandwiches were to be the reward.
 
 102 On a Penny Ferry. 
 
 I was all impatience to get to such a 
 reason feast and soul flow, and quite chafed 
 because the sea was " wet as wet could 
 be," and the medium of a ferry-boat would 
 have to be used. 
 
 But the seven or eight minutes' transit 
 did not, after all, drag unduly. 
 
 I had hurried exceedingly to catch the 
 boat, broken "into a run" across the quay, 
 and hastened breathlessly through the turn- 
 stile and down the jetty, only to find there 
 were still six minutes to the time of de- 
 parture. 
 
 So I went past the cabin and outside up 
 the bow to cool my warm cheeks and in- 
 dulge in a little justifiable wrath against 
 that curiously untrustworthy article the 
 feminine watch. 
 
 There was a very little girl at the end, 
 and an oddly large boy ; that is to say, for 
 his age. He was in frocks yet, and had 
 probably not seen more than three mos- 
 quito seasons. But he was surprisingly 
 bulky and solid looking, and the babyish,
 
 On a Penny Ferry. 103 
 
 wool cap surmounting his big, wide face ? 
 looked absolutely laughable. The girl, on 
 the contrary, was the smallest creature 
 imaginable. She had a little, old face, and 
 tiny, bird-like hands that grasped tightly at 
 an ancient, blue plush bag; and she kept 
 one of her bright, eager eyes on the boy at 
 her side and one on the dancing harbour 
 and the ships. 
 
 " It's Frederick Thomas's birthday," she 
 said suddenly, seeing that I was looking 
 in a speculative fashion at the boy. 
 
 "Ah!" I said, startled by the abruptness 
 of the announcement, for I had hardly re- 
 covered sufficiently to take the initiative in 
 the conversation. 
 
 " An' we're goin' a voy'ge ain't we, 
 Frederick ? " 
 
 Frederick Thomas only looked vacantly 
 at his thumb which, for one brief moment, 
 he had extracted from his mouth. 
 
 " Mrs. Jinks lent us the bag, and daddy 
 guv us tuppence," she said, and a great, 
 beautiful smile spread over her small, quiet
 
 104 On a Penny Ferry. 
 
 face. " Ain't the 'arbor fine, and the ships ? 
 ain't this a fine ship ? ain't we enjoyin' our- 
 selves, Frederick ? " 
 
 Frederick was still regarding his succulent 
 thumb, and gave no answering speech or 
 smile. 
 
 " Can't he talk yet ? " I said, regarding 
 the fat-headed child in a fascinated way. 
 
 " N-no," she said, very regretfully. " He's 
 gone in the 'ed a bit, you see, and all gone 
 
 in the legs " She paused and looked 
 
 at him very tenderly. " But you can laff, 
 can't you, Frederick?" 
 
 She bobbed her head up and down within 
 an inch of his nose, she pinched his fat, bare 
 legs, and gave an odd little whistle " Did- 
 dums den, chuck-a-ruck-cluck, tom-timithy 
 ti-chooral." 
 
 Over the wide, smooth face of the child 
 dawned a faint flicker of a smile, his dull 
 eyes disappeared in two folds of flesh, his 
 toothless gums displayed themselves, his 
 chin touched his chest. I turned away 
 almost with horror, and hastened to add
 
 On a Penny Ferry. I05 
 
 myself to the crowd already gathered at the 
 side to be ready to land with a minimum 
 of delay and a maximum of discomfort. 
 
 Up to the wharf the boat sidled, churned 
 the water, flung out a rope, tossed down 
 the gangway, and emptied itself. The last 
 view I had of my little travelling companions 
 was one hastily taken over my shoulder. 
 They were up at the bow still, and seemed 
 trying to efface themselves. 
 
 It was much more than an hour before 
 I had a surfeit of soul, strawberries, and 
 sandwiches, and was ready to return. 
 By an athletic-looking engine-boy I had 
 noticed, I knew it was the same boat in 
 which I had crossed over. And at the boat- 
 head Frederick Thomas and the Small 
 Person were sitting in just the same atti- 
 tudes as an hour back. 
 
 The Small Person's face grew crimson as I 
 took my seat. 
 
 " Don't let on," she said, in an imploring 
 voice. She caught at my arm with her 
 little, thin hand.
 
 io6 On a Penny Ferry. 
 
 " Oh ! don't let on, there's a good 'un, 
 it's Frederick Thomas's birthday, or I 
 wouldn't 'ave." 
 
 I looked at Frederick for a solution, but he 
 merely showed me both his thumbs, which 
 looked water-worn, like the fingers of a 
 washerwoman. 
 
 " We rid each time the man don't know, 
 we ain't done no 'arm, 'ave we, Tom-tid- 
 dums ? " went on the little beseeching voice, 
 " an' we guv one browny, didn't we, 
 Tomothy ? 'Ere's one fer goin' back." 
 
 She opened her hand and disclosed a 
 bright penny. " Don't let on, I say." 
 
 I had an attack of coughing that lasted 
 a minute or two. " You have been travelling 
 backwards and forwards several times for 
 that one penny ! " I said as severely as I 
 could. 
 
 The Small Person grew white, and put 
 a protecting arm round Frederick Thomas. 
 
 " Are you goin' to get us copped ? " she 
 said in a voice that shook. Two big tears 
 sprang into her wide, frightened eyes, and
 
 On a Penny Ferry. 107 
 
 fell on Frederick's woollen hat ; the chest under 
 the old cotton frock heaved convulsively. 
 
 I reassured her eagerly. Those two great 
 tears would have made me help to defraud 
 all the ferry companies in the world. 
 
 A shilling would take her to Manly 
 twice, I said, presenting her with two 
 sixpences ; and it would be a longer 
 voyage. Suppose Frederick Thomas had 
 another birthday to-morrow, and they went 
 there ? 
 
 She cried a little, in a quiet, subdued 
 way, from relief, then she dried her eyes 
 on the top of the cap, and gazed speech- 
 lessly at the sixpences. 
 
 Anything so commonplace as " Thank 
 you " she did not attempt to say, but she 
 closed and unclosed her hand, where the 
 little coins lay, and touched them with 
 almost reverent fingers. Then she moved 
 closer to me, and looked up with wet, 
 shining eyes. " You can 'ave Frederick 
 Thomas on your lap a bit," she said, in 
 a low voice that had still a quiver in it. 
 
 H
 
 IDS On a Penny Ferry. 
 
 I told her gently I would not like to 
 disturb the little fellow, he looked very 
 comfortable where he was. and I should 
 be getting out very soon. 
 
 We came up alongside the wharf at the 
 quay, and I said good-bye to the children, 
 took my penny out of my glove (a pernicious 
 habit, but rife among ferry travellers of the 
 gentler sex), and made my way across the 
 gangway, up the jetty and through the 
 turnstile, just as the Small Person staggered 
 through with the large and lumpy Frederick 
 clasped in her little arms. 
 
 When I was nearly at the top of the 
 hill I found, to my horror, I had lost my 
 purse. I distinctly remembered having it 
 on my knee when I gave the sixpences, 
 and therefore hurriedly retraced my steps. 
 Frederick Thomas and the Small Person 
 were still lingering, watching the w r ater 
 through the rails. " My purse! " I gasped. 
 "Did you see my purse? a brown one 
 my purse, I have lost it." 
 
 The Small Person gave me a quick look
 
 On a Penny Ferry. 109 
 
 of comprehension. " Mebbe you dropped 
 it mebbe it's on the ship 'ere, 'old 'ard." 
 
 The next minute she had thrust the bulky 
 Frederick into my astonished arms, had 
 darted through the turnstile, heedless o r 
 the shout sent after her for her penny. I 
 pressed closer to the opening and looked 
 anxiously after her. The boat was moving 
 off there was quite a wide space of water 
 between but she sprang lightly over on 
 to the deck, amid a perfect storm of cries 
 and warnings. 
 
 Across the white-topped waves the steamer 
 made its way, jauntily frothing up the water 
 as if with supreme scorn at my contretemps. 
 
 For it was a contretemps without a doubt. 
 Indeed, I cannot in all my life remember 
 a time when I felt more abjectly unhappy, 
 than I did as I stood on that quay, holding 
 in my arms Frederick of the fat head and 
 woollen cap. 
 
 People looked at me curiously as they 
 came hurrying down for the boat ; several 
 I knew by sight glanced at me and then
 
 no On a Penny Ferry. 
 
 at that awful child, with the greatest sur- 
 prise depicted on their faces. For one thing, 
 I knew I was not holding the boy just as 
 a tender nurse should ; he was terribly 
 heavy, and I was simply grasping him round 
 the waist just as I had taken him from the 
 Small Person. 
 
 Ordinary babies seem to fall naturally into 
 a sitting position on your arm, but this child 
 had no joints, and just stayed in a stiff, 
 shapeless heap. Once I tried to set him on 
 the ground, but it was a failure. The Small 
 Person had told me he was " gone in the 
 legs," but this I had forgotten. The minute 
 I tried to make him stand, however, his feet 
 doubled under him, and he fell down 
 helplessly. I gathered him up again, and 
 with courage, born of utter despair, walked 
 as far as the Neutral Bay shed. And then 
 I saw some people I knew slightly crossing 
 the quay, and I walked back to the North 
 shore landing-place with burning cheeks. 
 
 If only I could have gone through and 
 dropped him on one of the seats ! I could
 
 On a Penny Ferry. m 
 
 have kept a watchful eye on him to see he 
 didn't drown his hideous little self, and at the 
 same time have appeared as if I had no con- 
 nection with him. But I was absolutely 
 penniless, and more than that, the man at 
 the turnstile seemed to regard me with a 
 distrustful eye. He had seen the Small 
 Person in my company, and, of course, she 
 had mulcted him of his penny. 
 
 I looked up at the clock. I had only had 
 the child for four minutes, though it seemed 
 an eternity since he had been thrust into my 
 arms, and there was no chance of the boat 
 coming back for another ten. 
 
 And I remembered there were only three 
 shillings, two postage stamps, and a pearl 
 button in my purse. I would rather have 
 lost it ten times over than have endured this. 
 My back was breaking with the unaccus- 
 tomed burden. How the Small Person 
 carried him about as she did will ever remain 
 a mystery to me. 
 
 Dark thoughts entered my head of 
 abandoning him, setting him down in a safe
 
 H2 On a Penny Ferry. 
 
 place on the ground, and stealthily fleeing 
 citywards ; but I knew officious people would 
 raise a hue and cry after me, and I should 
 be forced to take him again. I thought of 
 tipping someone near to hold him, but then 
 I had not the wherewithal to tip, and felt 
 certain the little girl would not recover the 
 purse. 
 
 Eight minutes still by the clock. The 
 boy was slipping slowly from my arms. I 
 gave him an impatient jerk upwards, and in 
 so doing displaced his thumb from its mouth 
 refuge. And then a fresh horror came upon 
 me. His eyes disappeared in his fleshy 
 cheeks, his head fell back, his face went 
 purple, his mouth opened and exposed the 
 red, naked gums, and a piercing and un- 
 earthly yell arose from his throat. I stuffed 
 his hand nearly the whole of it back into 
 his mouth, and, almost choking with im- 
 potent anger, bore him off beyond the Manly 
 shed, where there seemed fewer people. 
 
 Someway the eight minutes dragged away 
 I have lived through whole weeks that
 
 in a Penny Ferry. 
 
 have seemed far shorter and the boat came 
 back. 
 
 From my hiding place I watched the 
 people stream off and disperse, thinking 1 
 would not go back till the coast was clearer. 
 Suddenly I saw the Small Person flying over 
 the ground to me like a little, wild rabbit. 
 
 Her eyes were dilated, her cheeks deathly 
 pale, her lips twitching. She stretched out 
 her little shaking arms. 
 
 " Guv 'im me, guv 'im me, at wanst," 
 she said fiercely. 
 
 I dropped him upon her with the utmost 
 promptitude, and she held him to her, 
 almost hungrily. 
 
 " Well, did you get my purse," I said. 
 
 She gave me another fierce look from her 
 blazing eyes, then she pulled it from the 
 front of her dress and handed it to me. 
 
 " 'Twas on the seat," she said shortly. 
 
 Then her anger burst out. 
 
 " An' I went back and saved it fer you 
 an 1 all, an' then you go and try ter steal 
 Frederick Thomas ! "
 
 ii 4 On a Penny Ferry 
 
 " Try to what ? " I said, bewildered. 
 
 " Oh, I saw you ; sneaking round here 
 trying to hide from me." 
 
 She buried her nose in the pompon on 
 the top of the cap, and down her cheeks 
 there dropped two more great heavy tears 
 like the tears of an old, sad woman. 
 Frederick smiled up at her in his pleasing, 
 toothless way, and tried playfully to insert 
 his wet thumb in her eye. 
 
 She gathered him up tightly. 
 
 " Diddums den, tim tomothy," she said, 
 smiling, too, a brief, watery smile. " Did- 
 dums try to steal my own Tom-tibithy ! " 
 
 " My dear child," I said, for this new 
 aspect of the affair was appalling, "my dear 
 child ; why, I would sooner try to make 
 off with the quay bodily than Frederick 
 Thomas." 
 
 The Small Person gave me a look of 
 withering and eloquent unbelief. Then she 
 clasped Frederick Thomas close to her 
 little breast, and moved silently and swiftly 
 away with him
 
 On a Penny Ferry. II5 
 
 I watched the odd, small figure until it 
 was lost in the grey, falling shadows of 
 the winter afternoon. 
 
 And then I made my way, slowly and 
 thoughtfully, up the hill, citywards, mar- 
 velling at the wonderful pennyworth it is 
 possible to get on an everyday ferry-boat.
 
 AS IT FELL OUT.
 
 As it Fell Out. lig 
 
 AS IT FELL OUT. 
 
 TWO loved her. 
 With the great love, that is. In 
 her quiet home away out of one of the big 
 country towns the lesser loves of mother, 
 invalided sister, and delicate maiden aunts 
 encompassed her, and made sweet all her 
 days. She was a little idol to them all, now 
 she was eighteen, having been delicate even 
 to the point of death in her childhood. 
 
 It was the turning up of her schoolgirl 
 curls and the lengthening of her frocks that 
 brought the two with the boldness of busi- 
 ness. Woolnough was a keeper of sheep, but 
 Barrett was a tiller of the ground. 
 
 The mother and the maiden aunts favoured
 
 120 As it Fell Out. 
 
 Woolnough. He was English, and his great 
 station was unmortgaged ; but Bryda's eyes 
 were shyest when Barrett was there, and she 
 took more interest in the latest methods of 
 irrigation than the rise and fall of the wool 
 market. 
 
 In the heart of the keeper of sheep was 
 envy and hatred and bitterness, just as it 
 had been "in the beginning." 
 
 They smoked together one night after a 
 visit, and Woolnough's anger burst its 
 bounds. 
 
 " But for you, there would have been no 
 obstacle," he said. " She was mine before 
 you came. I have known her since she was 
 five. I taught her to ride ; she kissed me 
 for a little kangaroo I found for her when 
 she was ten ; she even kissed me when she 
 was thirteen, and used to call herself my 
 little wife." 
 
 Redness, dull and deep, was on Barrett's 
 brow. 
 
 "She was a child," he said. "She is 
 grown up now, and the choice lies with her."
 
 As it Fell Out. 
 
 121 
 
 But Woolnough raved of the stealing of 
 his darling, of the injustice, the deliberate 
 planning of Barrett. 
 
 And Barrett's nature was the loyalest and 
 sweetest in the world. 
 
 He knocked the ashes out of his pipe and 
 stood up. 
 
 " I was going to ask her to-morrow," he 
 said. " Since you think you have first right 
 I will not go near for a week. After that, 
 unless you have succeeded, I shall try again." 
 Even as he spoke, however, his heart was 
 warmed by the recollection of the sweet 
 colour that had dyed her cheeks when she 
 bade him good-bye. 
 
 On the seventh day after this, Bryda was 
 dressed to go into Nerrinderie, for her 
 weekly singing lesson. The busy little 
 township lay ten miles away one mile she 
 always walked, which brought her to 
 Booligabbili, where there was a platform 
 siding ; the rest of the way she went by 
 train. 
 
 Now it happened that on this seventh day,
 
 122 
 
 As it Fell Out. 
 
 when she was dressed, even to her large 
 white hat and pale grey dainty gloves, she 
 fancied the plainness of her white muslin 
 frock would receive an added charm 
 from a bunch of pink roses in her waist- 
 band. 
 
 " For," she whispered to her girlish heart, 
 " Mr. Barrett will get in, perhaps, at the 
 siding ; he nearly always goes in to the bank 
 on Thursdays. And even if he doesn't well, 
 John Woolnough likes pretty things." She 
 liked her old friend John very much, though 
 she had told him twice that week she could 
 not marry him. 
 
 The mother and the maiden aunts and the 
 elder sister were still sitting over lunch in the 
 shady dining-room. She went in to kiss 
 them and say good-bye as usual, for this 
 little weekly journey of hers was quite an 
 event in their quiet stream of life. 
 
 They bade her keep in the shade of the 
 fences, and be careful of the long grass. 
 They begged her to walk slowly, and be very 
 heedful getting in and out of the train. And
 
 As it Fell Out. I23 
 
 to be very careful when she crossed any of 
 the streets of Nerrinderie. 
 
 " Sweet little thing ! " they said, almost 
 before the door closed on her ; " dear little 
 thing ! How beautiful she is ! Wasn't she 
 looking a little pale ? Perhaps a tonic would 
 do good. Sweet, little pretty thing ! " 
 
 The pink roses ran in a riot of splendour 
 over the lower fence of the cow paddock. 
 Bryda went down and gathered the sweetest 
 of them, tenderness in her eyes. 
 
 She remembered putting them in her waist 
 belt, pinning a long stalk, and stooping for a 
 pale, flushed exquisite bud that grew low 
 down. She would put it in her brooch she 
 thought, and if persuasively asked to give up 
 the possession of it well, the chances were 
 she might come home without it. 
 
 It might have been five minutes later, it 
 might have been an hour, that she was 
 creeping through the quiet hall again with 
 a face of death. Seeking her bedroom door 
 and saying, " God ! God ! God ! " with white 
 lips and eyes wide with the terror of death.
 
 i2 4 As it Fell Out. 
 
 Holding one little hand in the other, moan- 
 ing softly, trembling, afraid to look. 
 
 But the death fear braced her in its 
 awfulness, lent her quick, strange courage 
 and calmness. 
 
 She tore away the muslin cuff of her 
 sleeve. Two little marks were there, horribly 
 distinct. She shut her eyes one moment to 
 forget the slim, brown, loathsome thing 
 that had touched her, and glided away under 
 the rose growth. 
 
 Barrett had dreaded this for her ; each 
 fresh one he had seen this long, hot summer 
 had filled him with fresh fear for her every 
 time he saw her, he begged her to be careful 
 where she walked. Some weeks ago he had 
 brought her a little case with a tiny hypo- 
 dermic syringe in it, a bottle of strychnine, 
 and full directions for its use. He had 
 insisted upon giving her an object lesson on 
 it ; had made her work it, understand the 
 measurements, and lose her fear of it. 
 
 It lay on her dressing table now, and she 
 picked it up with steady fingers. Of course
 
 As it Fell Out. 
 
 125 
 
 she must use it, and quickly, for what 
 was that strange feeling creeping over her 
 even now ? The directions swam before her 
 eyes, but her brain served her. " Three to 
 five minims if only a slight case," Barrett 
 had said ; " ten if severe." 
 
 " I am not black in the face," she said, 
 glancing at her white reflection in the 
 glass. 
 
 So she drew up the rod to the mark of 
 four, the needle in the strychnine, then she 
 pinched up a piece of her poor little arm 
 above the deadly bites, inserted the needle 
 and pushed the piston down again. Then 
 she slipped case and bottle into her pocket, 
 and went to the door. 
 
 " I must certainly get to a doctor's," she 
 muttered, and crept down the hall and out 
 of the front door once more. 
 
 From the very first, she had known that she 
 must not alarm those poor women in the 
 dining room. One of her aunts had heart 
 disease, the other was consumptive, the little 
 mother was delicate, the sister had a sprained
 
 i25 As it Fell Out. 
 
 ankle. The servant had left the day before, 
 and a successor not yet come. 
 
 " Dear, dear ! " said an aunt at the window. 
 " Why, the child must have come back for 
 something ; she is only just starting. Dear, 
 dear, dear ! she is running, Mary, running 
 in this shocking heat ; it will half kill 
 her." 
 
 At the gate of the little deserted platform 
 Woolnough was standing. Even when he 
 saw her white dress she was not hurrying 
 now he did not go to meet her, for the 
 bitterness of her last refusal was still in his 
 heart, and he remembered Barrett was free 
 to go to her. 
 
 But she fairly sprang at him. 
 
 "John," she said, "John! John! John! 
 John /" 
 
 Her face was working, her eyes were full 
 of wild horror. Now there was someone to 
 help her, all her braveness fled away. She 
 was like a little trembling child, terrified 
 out of its life. 
 
 He flung his arm round her to steady
 
 As it Fell Out. 127 
 
 her, for she swayed towards him. The 
 shock of the strangeness of her manner 
 kept him dumb. 
 
 She leaned against him, clung to him. 
 " Help me," she said, "John! John! John! 
 help me ! " 
 
 She thrust out her little wrist, and his face 
 went like death when he understood what 
 that ligature of gay sash ribbon meant. 
 
 He almost carried her into the waiting- 
 shed and put her on a seat. 
 
 " Did you see it ? " he said. 
 
 " Brown," she answered, shudderingly. 
 
 He bound the ribbon tighter, he knelt 
 down and put his lips to the marks and 
 sucked with all his might. 
 
 She told him stutteringly what she had 
 done for herself. 
 
 " Strychnine ! " he cried, " you injected 
 strychnine ! yourself ! where did you get 
 it ? great God ! you may have killed 
 yourself! " 
 
 She motioned to her pocket. "Get it 
 out/' she said.
 
 i28 As it Fell Out. 
 
 He put his hand in, and found the case, 
 the small bottle, the careful directions in 
 Barrett's writing. And his heart leapt with 
 the relief: he had the greatest faith in the 
 cure himself, and he found she had not 
 erred in the quantity. 
 
 " Four, you took? " he said. " I am going 
 to give you another five it must have been 
 quite twenty minutes ago." 
 
 He injected it quickly, deftly, like one 
 quite used to the method. 
 
 He almost cried aloud in his thankfulness 
 when he saw the snake-poison symptoms 
 abating under the powerful remedy. She 
 was able to speak connectedly again ; her 
 pulse was better ; the limpness was gone ; the 
 desire for sleep almost conquered. But he 
 insisted upon walking her up and down the 
 little shed ; his arm was round her waist to 
 give her support, she was clinging to his 
 shoulder with both her hands. 
 
 And it fell out that Barrett saw them. 
 His road had brought him into the enclosure 
 on the opposite side of the little station.
 
 As it Fell Out. 129 
 
 He had come down, light-heartedly enough. 
 Woolnough's surly manner when they met 
 during the week made him certain his suit 
 had been unsuccessful. 
 
 But he would not go from his word, and 
 speak to her. When he saw the white 
 fluttering dress come down the road, and 
 noticed his rival leaning against the gates, 
 he drew back among the bushes, and deter- 
 mined to jump unseen on the last car, when 
 the train came. He even walked back along 
 the tree-hidden road for a little way, and 
 smoked a pipe of great peace. 
 
 When the train was due, he strolled back 
 again, and saw Woolnough on his knees by 
 her side. Again he swung round and walked 
 away. A flush was on his forehead : he felt 
 he owed Woolnough an apology for looking. 
 But his contentment and quiet spirit had 
 gone. What if she yielded to this last appeal 
 of the man ? What if it had been mere 
 friendliness in her manner that he had 
 mistaken for a token that she cared a 
 little ?
 
 i 3 o As it Fell Out. 
 
 He waited away for a little time, his back 
 turned. 
 
 The train was already ten minutes overdue. 
 When he heard the far-off rumble, he turned 
 his face to the station again the man must 
 be off his knees by now. And his eyes 
 looked straight before him into the waiting- 
 shed. 
 
 Stupor came creeping slowly over the 
 girl again. 
 
 " John," she said faintly. 
 
 He drew her closer. "What is it, little girl?" 
 
 She hid her face a minute in his sleeve. 
 
 " Is there no one on the station ? " she 
 whispered. " Mr. Barrett or anyone; 
 please look." 
 
 The poor child felt she might die at the 
 doctor's, and longed inexpressibly for Barrett 
 to be with her. 
 
 John looked. 
 
 And saw the man's deathly-white face 
 through the bushes opposite, saw the wild 
 eyes, and knew how they were interpreting 
 this thing.
 
 As it Fell Out. i 3 i 
 
 But he had snatched her back from death 
 for himself. His arm tightened around 
 her waist. 
 
 " No," he said in an even tone. " There 
 is no one on the station, Bryda." 
 
 Then the train rushed up, and they went 
 away in it to the doctor's. 
 
 And Barrett turned slowly round and 
 
 walked up the hill again to his home. 
 * * * # 
 
 To this day the mother, the maiden aunts, 
 and the sister think Bryda stayed that night 
 unexpectedly in Nerrinderie, merely to keep 
 her old schoolfellow, the doctor's daughter, 
 company. 
 
 How were they to guess of the wild 
 night's struggle for their darling's life, 
 which had been fought between skill and 
 death ? Or of the wonderful day in which, 
 when the dawn crept in, the rod Death held 
 had burst out into blossoms of amaranth ? 
 
 They thought her pale, perhaps, when 
 Woolnough drove her home the heat 
 yesterday, of course, and the running. How
 
 i 3 2 As it Fell Out. 
 
 could she have been so unwise as to run ? 
 And did she know she had left the slip- 
 rails down in the cow paddock, and there 
 had been no milk for tea ? 
 
 Bryda cried under the bed-clothes every 
 night for a week, when she heard Barrett 
 had gone away. Gone off to Coolgardie, 
 report said, and sold the farm which never 
 was much good to a neighbouring squatter. 
 
 Then she grew ashamed of herself, and 
 pride stepped in, and made her gay again. 
 And, in the end, it fell^ out that she married 
 Woolnough.
 
 ALMOST AN IDYLL.
 
 Almost an Idyll. 135 
 
 ALMOST AN IDYLL. 
 
 BUT for four things, the "almost" might 
 have been left out of the title. They 
 were very trivial things, too mere details ; 
 but still they took from the symmetry and 
 exquisite completeness we are wont to look 
 for in an idyll. 
 
 The heroine had freckles quite a thick 
 powdering of them on her smooth cheeks 
 and the bridge of her nose. That was the 
 first thing. 
 
 For the second, the hero wore a black 
 coat, rather shiny at the seams, and frayed 
 at the wrists the kind of coat that one 
 associates with a high stool and ledger, 
 luncheon sandwiches (newspaper wrapped), 
 and a boarding house at a pound a-week.
 
 : 3 6 Almost an Idyll. 
 
 In perfect idylls nothing but white 
 flannel jackets are allowed. 
 
 The third detracting factor was the ab- 
 sence of forks. Somebody had forgotten 
 them in the confusion consequent upon 
 packing up for a week's picnic. And neither 
 fingers nor chopsticks, when used in con- 
 junction with corned beef, fish, or potatoes, 
 are precisely idyllic. 
 
 The fourth thing was Ebenezer. Nothing 
 else, however, in the world was wanting. 
 
 There was water, wind-kissed, dancing, 
 bubbling with laughter and light ; water, 
 brown and red and shadowy with suns that 
 died gloriously ; water, pure and silver 
 white, smiling up to a full-faced moon. 
 
 And there were skies, beautiful always ; 
 great, high, wide fields of delicate tints, 
 with never a chimney nor brick monstrosity 
 across their loveliness. 
 
 Trees ? Miles of them ! Green young 
 gums, greener young gums, young gums 
 almost white in their delicate pale greenness. 
 Old gums, sturdy and fearless, sun-smitten
 
 Almost an Idyll. 137 
 
 brown and deepest red ; older gums, silvered 
 as to trunk, and with grey, bleached leaves 
 on edge, chary of casting shade. Ti-trees, 
 sober - green and ragged ; wattle, fresher 
 green and yellow crowned ; trees grown 
 blue and more blue, merging into the grey- 
 blue tenderness of distant hills. 
 
 And there was growing life in plenty. 
 
 Even the chaperone, who was forty, was 
 young. You had only to look in her eyes 
 to discover that. 
 
 But the heroine was deliciously young. 
 
 If you had been artistically inclined, you 
 would have seized a canvas and tried to 
 catch her upon it with a flash and quick 
 flutter of brushes. And you would have 
 called your picture " Spring," or " Young 
 Hope," or " Glad Life," or " The Spirit of 
 a New World," or some such commonplace 
 title, because the paucity of language would 
 not allow you to express better her sur- 
 prising youth and vigour. 
 
 Her blood was young, and her slight, 
 straight body. Her lips were young their
 
 138 Almost an Idyll. 
 
 redness and freshness were marvellous. 
 Every curl and loose tress of her hair had 
 a glad, mysterious secret with the wind, 
 because it was also very young ; and her 
 eyes were brimming with that light and 
 happiness seen in very young eyes only. 
 
 She had freckles, certainly, as I said 
 before, but then they were very young, too, 
 having been born during the picnic, and it 
 was only because the sun knew she was a 
 child of earth at its happiest that he had 
 kissed her, again and again, in his gladness. 
 
 Fresh blouses, muslins and shady hats, 
 flannels, blazers and head-gear uncity-like, 
 white tents, gaily painted boats, and abound- 
 ing happiness, made up the background and 
 the foreground and the middle distance of the 
 most sunshiny picture the great artist the 
 world had sketched for himself for Christ- 
 mas amusement. But the second and the 
 fourth detail, the black coat and Ebenezer, 
 were shadows he had skilfully placed in, be- 
 cause, like the wielders of smaller brushes, 
 he also knew a thing or two about contrasts
 
 Almost an Idyll. I39 
 
 and relief and the like. And the highest light 
 being Rhoda Ebenezer and the coat did 
 excellently well for dull, deep shadows. 
 
 The coat was Ebenezer's. That, of 
 course. 
 
 As if anyone else there would have shiny 
 seams and threadbare buttons ; as if anyone 
 else would have black at all 1 
 
 Ebenezer was the man with the black coat. 
 That, of course. 
 
 As if anyone else in that gay, modern- 
 spirited crowd would have been burdened 
 with such a name ! 
 
 He did not like it himself, and often thought 
 his parents might have chosen more happily. 
 But somehow he never seemed to have 
 the time or inclination to change it. All his 
 life had been so taken up in fighting the 
 world, which for its own artistic purposes 
 insisted that he should be a shadow. 
 
 He was very ordinary to look at. His 
 hair was brown, quite dull, and without a 
 suspicion of wave. His skin was dull : high 
 stools, alternated with boarding-houses, 
 
 K
 
 140 Almost an Idyll. 
 
 seldom improve the complexion ; his chin, 
 his nose, and his forehead were altogether 
 unremarkable. His eyes were dull at any 
 rate they were quiet, and the shadow showed 
 there most of all. 
 
 It seemed odd that he should be there at 
 all among those laughter-loving picnickers. 
 But one of them had rubbed up against him 
 in life, and felt a happy man's pity for his 
 loneliness and dulness. He asked him what 
 he was going to do with the holiday week. 
 
 Ebenezer didn't know smoke, he sup- 
 posed, on the lounge, as none of the other 
 lodgers would be using it. 
 
 The Happy Man was engaged to the best 
 and loveliest woman on earth, and the two of 
 them were going, with other happy ones, 
 Hawkesbury Riverwards to camp, and be 
 nomads for the festive days. And they were 
 sorry for all the world because it was not 
 themselves, So they asked Ebenezer to 
 come, because they were afraid the Fates 
 would stick pins into them, if they did not 
 spread their happiness a little.
 
 Almost an Idyll. I4I 
 
 Ebenezer said " No," of course. 
 
 Then the leg of the lounge came off, and 
 his tobacco was dry and didn't taste. And 
 the long terraces opposite were peeling in the 
 sun, and no constable-like wind bade the 
 still, hot air in the streets " move on." 
 
 So the last day, when the Happy Man 
 asked him to change his mind, he did so, to 
 his own absolute amazement. He packed a 
 little bag with a few clothes, bought a pair of 
 sand shoes, to save his office boots, and held 
 his head quite jauntily when he informed his 
 landlady he was going for " a week's holi- 
 day." But by the end of the first day, he 
 was overpoweringly sorry he had come. He 
 would have given a whole month's salary 
 six golden pounds to have been able to get 
 away from them all, back to the narrow 
 lodging-house in the hot, noisy street. But 
 a launch had brought them there, and a 
 launch would call for them at the end of the 
 time. There was no getting away before. 
 
 So he gave himself up to the inevitable. 
 He sculled the chaperone about the river
 
 i 4 2 Almost an Idyll. 
 
 She was the only one of the party with whom 
 he did not feel intensely awkward and miser- 
 able. And he took the billy-boiling as his 
 own particular work. The stick-hunting, 
 the manipulation of the tripod, the water 
 fetching, and the watching for the first 
 steam all these were occupations that 
 disposed of his time and his awkward 
 hands. He could never have endured that 
 week had it not been for the extraordinary 
 tea-drinking capacity of the party. 
 
 At night they all went out in the boats and 
 floated dreamily about in the white moonlight, 
 and lifted their happy voices, and sang of love 
 and roses and clasped hands and kisses. 
 
 And the wind whispered the same things, 
 and the trees caught the low, sweet secret, 
 and whispered it in turn to the sky, that 
 looked on with all its tender, shining eyes. 
 
 And the beautiful river listened and 
 laughed joyfully as it lay in the arms of its 
 lover, the shore. 
 
 And Ebenezer sat with his pipe gone out, 
 and listened, too.
 
 Almost an Idyll. i 43 
 
 The first night he had ventured out with 
 them, and had sat silent at the end of the 
 boat while they sang to the music of the 
 plashing oars. And he had been drunk with 
 the beauty of it all. The girls, with their 
 soft, white dresses and moonlit eyes, the 
 little, leaping silver waves, the swaying, 
 whispering trees, the rising and falling of the 
 sweet voices no wonder they were like 
 intoxicants to his unaccustomed senses. 
 
 Rhoda had been nearest to him, once the 
 wind had blown a fold of her muslin dress 
 across his knee, three times she had spoken 
 to him in her young friendliness. So, in 
 return, he gave her all his heart. 
 
 Secretly, of course. He had the wisdom 
 to know that hearts are utterly useless 
 appendages when backed by only seventy- 
 two pounds a year. 
 
 That is why he stayed on shore after the 
 first night, and let the wind blow little bursts 
 of song and soft laughter across the water 
 into his face. He said he was afraid the 
 billy might be stolen if he went again : he
 
 Almost an Idyll. 
 
 would stay and be watchdog, since he could 
 not help in the singing. 
 
 His pipe nearly always went out as soon 
 as they were fairly started, and he used to 
 sit staring out after them into the white 
 darkness, till, some hours later, they pulled 
 slowly back. 
 
 Sometimes he used to feel supremely sorry 
 for himself because of the new burden that 
 had fallen upon him, but that was generally 
 when the boats had drifted out of sight and 
 hearing. 
 
 Other times he hugged himself in the glad, 
 exultant feeling that he had given his 
 heart to the beautiful girl out there in the 
 boat, and that she knew nothing about it. 
 
 He assured himself that reciprocated love 
 could never be love in the very highest 
 sense. 
 
 But he nearly always laughed as he 
 said it. 
 
 During the long, hushed evenings by the 
 water edge, he found out what his ideas of 
 heaven were.
 
 Almost an Idyll. i 45 
 
 It was a river, he decided, a river that 
 flowed to Eternity. And it had a sky above 
 it rilled with white stars and one white great 
 moon. 
 
 And his own particular heaven would be a 
 small boat with Rhoda in it, Rhoda in a 
 white dress with flannel flowers in her hair. 
 Rhoda just opposite to him, with the steering 
 lines in her hands to keep them from running 
 into any of the angels who would have been 
 infinitely in the way. 
 
 On the fifth evening the Mighty Artist 
 scooped up some white in his great brush. 
 He fancied a dash of it, clear and untoned 
 across the shadow might be more effective 
 even than his first design. 
 
 Ebenezer asked the chaperone if she would 
 let him pull her up the river. It was just at 
 the finish of tea, and they were all sitting 
 in lazy scatteredness about the grass. 
 
 She told him she was good for three more 
 cups of tea yet, but not for the exertion of 
 getting into a boat. 
 
 "I'll come," Rhoda said, with sudden im-
 
 146 Almost an Idyll. 
 
 pulsiveness. "I'm tired of seeing people 
 eat shall I ? " 
 
 " Yes," he said. 
 
 He went down to the sand stretch a little 
 way off and got the boat ready with 
 trembling hands. He moved the seat half-a- 
 dozen times ; he baled out every drop of 
 water, and laid down the scrap of carpet. 
 
 That he should have his heaven so soon 
 as this ! 
 
 She came down to the edge, and he helped 
 her in, placed the steering-lines in her hands, 
 and pushed off with her from the very spot 
 where he had sat each night. 
 
 Long after he remembered that he hardly 
 spoke at all. She sat there looking at him 
 with her kind, young eyes, talking, laughing, 
 bidding him look now at the purple-gold 
 edge of the sun, almost gone ; now at the 
 moon stealing up behind the trees ; now at 
 the fish that leapt from the water for a second ; 
 now at flock of black swan overhead. 
 
 He listened to her, and looked at her, and 
 forgot the river did not flow to Eternity.
 
 Almost an Idyll. i 47 
 
 By-and-bye his strange silence quieted 
 her. She thought, perhaps, he did not care 
 to talk, so she slipped her hand over the side 
 into the cool, moving water, and gave herself 
 up to the thought of beautiful love that some 
 day would come into her life, and of shining 
 days that would stretch out over all her 
 future. 
 
 The moon rose higher and the river grew 
 white and more white ; and still he rowed on 
 and on, and still she leaned back and thought 
 of love with parted lips and tender eyes. 
 
 Then a fish jumped close to her hand, 
 and she remembered Ebenezer was in the 
 boat. 
 
 " It is late let us go back, Ebenezer," 
 she said, dreamily. 
 
 She did not notice she used his Christian 
 name they all called him by it when speak- 
 ing of him, since it was so odd, but he 
 noticed, and was reconciled to it for ever 
 after. 
 
 He rowed back again over the silver 
 stretches and the shadowed ones. He
 
 148 Almost an Idyll. 
 
 thought the moon had never been so large 
 nor the stars so shiningly countless. 
 
 Then they came up to the strip of pale 
 sand, and he made the boat fast and lifted her 
 out without a word. 
 
 All the sixth day was warm and bright 
 from the recollection of it. 
 
 The seventh day they were to break up 
 the camp and go home. Ebenezer began 
 to prepare a little chamber in his heart for 
 the reception of the romance of his life. 
 
 It was swept clean from every other 
 thought ; it was lonely, infinitely sad ; it was 
 a little inward grave, and he had a key ready 
 to lock it, and make it a thing apart all his 
 life from the other chambers that were not 
 hallowed. 
 
 Then the artist grew capricious. Give a 
 little child a book of black and white illus- 
 trations and a paint box, and notice the way 
 it will load the brightest paints upon the 
 figures that are the blackest. 
 
 The artist forgot Art, and became even as 
 a little child.
 
 Almost an Idyll. I49 
 
 He filled his brush with all the colours 
 that are in the sunset, in the brightening 
 dawn, in happy human hearts, in hope at 
 its birth. 
 
 A man came up in his sailing boat and 
 joined the party. He was fulfilling a promise 
 to join them on the last day, and he had 
 brought all the letters that had accumulated 
 for everybody in town. 
 
 He dealt them out, slowly, teasingly bills, 
 invitations, love letters, circulars. 
 
 There was one for Ebenezer fat, closely- 
 written. 
 
 He took it and went down to the sand-strip 
 to read it in solitude and surprise ; he who 
 had never before got a letter of this 
 length ! 
 
 The Happy Man saw his look of astonish- 
 ment, and hoped nothing was wrong. 
 
 " It's from a fellow in the office," Eben- 
 ezer said, staring at the signature. He 
 turned away and went down to his old seat 
 at the water edge. 
 
 Rhoda found him there two hours later
 
 i 5 o Almost an Idyll. 
 
 when tea was half over. The others sent 
 her down to see if all was right, as she was 
 the youngest. 
 
 He told her all about it ; asked her to read 
 the letter and tell him for certain that he was 
 not dreaming. 
 
 " Robinson might be playing a practical 
 joke on me, you see," he said, "and perhaps 
 my brain is not clear enough to detect it." 
 
 But Rhoda's was not, either, for every- 
 thing was simple and bore truth on the face 
 of it. 
 
 Robinson had entered into a sweep that 
 had to do with the Melbourne Cup. He had 
 taken two i tickets, but, before the event 
 was run, an evil time came upon him, and 
 he needed twenty shillings in cash more than 
 he had ever needed money on earth. So 
 Ebenezer, in one of the weak moments he 
 was subject to, despite his shabby coat, 
 offered to lend him that sum. Robinson 
 told him he might never be able to pay him 
 back, and asked him if, instead, he would 
 buy one of his two consultation tickets.
 
 Almost an Idyll. i 5I 
 
 Ebenezer had never gone into a sweep in 
 his life. It startled him a little not that 
 he objected on principle to that mode 
 of gambling, but that he had hitherto felt 
 it was one of the luxuries which might be 
 indulged in only by people with incomes 
 greater than ^"72. 
 
 Still, Robinson was a good fellow and in 
 sore trouble. He would not accept the loan, 
 so of course there was nothing for it but to 
 buy the ticket. 
 
 " Which will you have ? " Robinson said, 
 " 690, or 10,009 ? " 
 
 Ebenezer laughed and said, " Either or 
 either," pronouncing the first word with an 
 initial " e " and the second with an " i." 
 
 "Keep it for me," he added, "and when 
 the results are out you, can just pay any 
 fortune I may have made into my bank, 
 where I have a balance of 4. at present." 
 
 So Robinson put the tickets away in his 
 desk in separate envelopes, labelling one with 
 his own name, the other with his friend's. 
 
 And Ebenezer forgot forthwith the whole
 
 152 Almost an Idyll. 
 
 matter, and could no more have told the 
 number of either of the tickets than the 
 number of stars in the heavens. 
 
 In course of time the race came off. 
 
 " No luck," Robinson said, and Ebenezer 
 did not even sigh, for he had never dreamed 
 of expecting it. 
 
 After that, Robinson left the office and 
 disappeared altogether. 
 
 This strange, long letter Ebenezer was 
 reading by the edge of the little, lapping, 
 river waves, was from him. 
 
 " One of those two tickets drew a big 
 prize," it said, "a prize of ^10,000. It 
 happened to be yours, Ebenezer, number 690, 
 which I had marked with your name; 10,009, 
 my number, was a blank. I believe I was 
 meant originally for an honest man. Up till 
 then I had always been able to show clean 
 hands through life. But my strength was 
 not as my days, though the great, good Book 
 tells us it shall be. 
 
 "There was a woman I had wanted with 
 all the life and soul of me for years. With
 
 Almost an Idyll. i 53 
 
 money she was possible. And with some- 
 thing less than a crime for you had told me 
 to choose the tickets wealth undreamed of 
 would be mine, and she would come to me. 
 So of course I took it, Ebenezer. There is 
 nothing the best man on God's earth would 
 not do with a love like mine in his heart. 
 Not that you will understand or know any- 
 thing about it, men like you never do, Eben, 
 my friend. 
 
 " However, she played me false four days 
 ago, and she's gone to America with a bride- 
 groom worth treble that wretched sweep. So, 
 of course, the money's no good to me any 
 longer nor life, either. 
 
 " I have placed the former, less ten per cent., 
 to your banking account of /"/; - The latter 
 I shall return without delay to the God who 
 gave it. Buy a new coat, old man, first thing 
 with the money that black one of yours is 
 deucedly shabby. Then get a wife. A 
 young one who doesn't know enough to 
 deceive you. And, for the love of heaven, 
 smoke a better tobacco. God bless you ! "
 
 154 Almost an Idyll. 
 
 Just as Rhoda finished this wonderful 
 letter the Happy Man came along. He had 
 the Evening News in his hand. 
 
 " R'mber Robinson ? " he said to Ebenezer. 
 " Cove with fine moustache, awfully gone 
 on Rosina Delarne in the Opera Company. 
 He's blown his brains out, poor beggar ! " 
 
 They did'nt break up the camp on the 
 right day after all. 
 
 Ebenezer's nature was slow, and this 
 sudden upheaval of his life almost stopped it. 
 For a few days he was ill enough to make 
 moving him unwise. There was a doctor in the 
 party, and he stayed on, also the chaperone, 
 the Happy Man and his fiancee, and Rhoda, 
 who was the fiancee's sister the rest went 
 home. Rhoda helped to nurse him, read to 
 him out in the sunshine, coaxed him into 
 eating what was ordered, encouraged him to 
 talk of that part of his life that had been 
 bottled up, and listened to it with tears of 
 quick young pity in her eyes. 
 
 So the idyll closed in a consistently idyllic 
 fashion.
 
 PR 
 
 6005 
 
 C9317^