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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I'd be twenty-one then."

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

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

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

These thoughts were not for publication, as they might have made me appear a traitor to the prejudices of one party and the desire of the other, whereas I was loyal to them both.

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

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

"Isn't it funny some people think one thing good and others don't. No one around here wants to be on the stage but me, or seems to understand that actresses are made out of ordinary people like you and me. 'Dora' doesn't know anything about the stage, but Mr Ernest does.

He doesn't think them terrible women, and says that his best woman friend was an actress once. If you thought grandma could be brought round at all I wouldn't go out with Dora to-morrow, I'd go with you to get out of it. Mr Ernest seemed to be very pleased with Ada Grosvenor; is she the same style as his young lady?"

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

"No, not at all," I replied.

"What is she like?"

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

"What's her name?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I lay awake a long time contemplating the best way of approaching Grandma Clay in regard to Dawn's singing lessons. One by one the pa.s.senger trains streamed into Noonoon, halted a panting five minutes at the station, then rumbled over the strange old iron-walled bridge, slowed down again to the little siding of Kangaroo on the other side, from whence up, up, the mountain-sides above the fertile valley, leaving the peaceful agriculturists soundly asleep after their toil.

The heavy "goods" lumbered by unceasingly, the throbbing of their great engines, their signalling, shunting, and tooting proving a perennial delight to me, comforting me with the knowledge that I still could feel a pulsation from the great population centres where my fellows congregate.

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

"You must go away, I tell you," said Mr p.o.r.nsch. "A nice thing it would be if a man in _my_ position were implicated."

"I didn't think a man of _your_ cla.s.s would be so cruel," sobbed the girl.

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

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

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

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

FOURTEEN.

THE Pa.s.sING OF THE TRAINS.

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

"Look at that, you dirty good-for-nothink young shaver; if the inspector came round we'd most likely lose our licence for it, an'

it's no fault of mine. If a great lump your age can't be depended on for nothink, I don't know what the world is coming to. I have to be responsible for everythink that goes on your back and into your stummick, and yet you can't do a single thing. You think I'm everlastin' joring, but I have to be. Some day, if ever you have a house of your own, you'll know how hard it is."

"I'm goin' to take jolly fine care I never have no house of me own.

The game ain't worth the candle," responded Andrew; "I reckon them as comes and lives in the place, like some of them summer-boarders, and orders us about as if they was Lord Muck an' we wasn't anybody, has the best of it."

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