 CHAPTER XXI. Grandma could think of nothing but the clerk's insult when she had gone for her electoral right. Him! That thing! What's he employed for but to do this work? And if he ain't prepared to do it decent, what any give up and let a better man in his place? Easy to be got, run and after a vote, indeed. But that's where I made me big mistake, I should have stayed at home and written to him, and he'd have been compelled to send the police with it. That's what I ought to have done, and let me servants that I'm taxed to keep do the work they're dying for want of instead of doing it myself. But at any rate, forgot me right, safe and sure, she said, with satisfaction. A long time would be getting them if all men was like him, which, thank God, they ain't. They've gone away with all these fellas in a government job, they think they're Lord Muck, and too good to speak to the folk that's keeping them there, and only for which they wouldn't be there at all. Only for Oscar lawyer and Mr. Pornch. And, Dawn, where are you? Mr. Pornch was very nice to me, and I asked him to tea, and to come down for some of them little things belonging to his niece. He's very cut up about her. Yes, about as cut up about her as Uncle Jake would be over me. Now, Dawn, how do you know? Severely inquired the old dame. I know very well that old men with his delightful slenderness of figure, and men who have drunk all the champagne and other poison it must have taken to colour his nose that way, haven't got much true feeling left, except for a bottle of wine and a feed of something high and well-seasoned. However, Mr. Pornch presently arrived, and illustrated by his snickering at Dawn, that notwithstanding his grief for a dead girl, he yet retained an eye for the charms of a living one. It also transpired that he would not have waited for an invitation to call upon us. This sweet bachelor champion of women's protection bills, who had so long deprived some woman of the felicity of being his wife, had apparently determined to hastily repair the omission, and it soon became evident that he meant to honour no lesser person than Dawn in this connection. Dawn, a princess in her own right, by reason of her health, her beauty, her youth, and her honest maidenhood. He took Ernest's place in going to Sydney with her, thrust costly trifles upon her. He was fifty-five if he were a day, and a repulsive debauchee at that. Dawn so healthy and wholesome loathed him. She sat on her bed at night with her dainty toes on the floor, and raved while she combed her fine-spun brown hair. I let her rave, believing there's a good antidote for the worry of that dish of water that was rarely out of her thoughts. I knew that she never omitted to scan the football news in hopes of seeing the doings of a certain red-headed player recorded there, and I also knew that she was doomed to disappointment, unless she could connect R.E. Borezlaw with R. Ernest off the wash-up water incident. A man of paunch's calibre is hard to abash, or Dawn would have abashed him, but failing to do so, at last she came to me requesting that I should assist her to get rid of him. I don't want to complain to Grandma, said she. It might get abroad if she took it in hand, so I'd like to choke him off myself if I could. I have enough to suffer already, and I knew she was again thinking of that fatal dish of water, and how Dora Eeward twitted her concerning it. Then I took Dawn on my knee, as it were, and told her a story. It was such a painful story that I first extracted from her a solemn promise that she would not make a fuss of any sort for this young woman lack restraint, that command over her emotions, which, if carefully adjusted and gauged, will make the work of a talented artist pass for genius, and that of a genius pass for the work of a God. When his connection with the all-fighted young girl, who had slipped out in the dead of night to throw herself at the gently gliding Nanun, became known to Dawn, I was afraid her horror would so betray her that any subsequent plans for the punishment of the miscreant might fall through. I'll knock him down with the poker next time he comes. I'll throw a kettle of boiling water on him, as sure as eggs are eggs. Fancy the reptile leering around me. I felt nearly poisoned as it was, but I didn't know he was a murderer as well. Oh! The height of him to come here. I really will throw boiling water on him. Dawn continued in this strain for some time, but as she quieted down became possessed of a notion to tar and feather him, in the mamma mentioned by her grandmother in one of her anecdotes. Dawn and I were to be called upon to assist in this ceremony, which was to take place upon the return of Mr. Paunch. For the present he had disappeared to attend to some business. In the interim the meetings continued without a break, and Dawn unremittingly looked for the football news, now with the war crowded into a far corner, by the special complexion that each daily chose to put on political affairs. Just look up the football news, I said one day, and see how my friend Ernest is doing. He made a lot of goals as forward in the last match. See? She coolly replied, putting her tapering forefinger on the name of R.E. Breslau, as she handed me the paper. Did he tell you he wanted to disguise his identity while here? Yes. He told me all about it one day when we went to Sydney, she replied, leaving me wondering what else I might have confided during these jaunts. Now that we required his presence, Mr. Paunch was not in evidence, and neither was anything to be heard of the red-headed footballer's reappearance, though he had been absent for weeks, and this brought us towards the end of June. At this date there appeared a paragraph stating that Breslau and several other amateur sportsmen were contemplating a tour of America to include the St. Louis exposition. That night someone besides myself heard the roar of the passing locomotives, but she did not confess the cause of her sleeplessness. It was one of those irritations one cannot tell, so she let off her irritation in other channels. Matters did not brighten as the days went on. Two nights after Ernest's reported departure for the states, Dora Eward brought Dawn home from Walker's committee meeting, and remained talking to her in the otherwise deserter dining room till a late hour. As soon as he left, Dawn came upstairs, and throwing herself face down was on her bed, burst into violent weeping. Dawn has come to you lately, Dawn, I inquired. Tell me what sort of twist you have put in your affair so that I may be able to help you. No one can help me," she crossly replied. Don't you think that I was once young and have suffered all these worries too? It is not so long since I was your age that I have forgotten what may torment a girl's heart. Thus abdued she presently made me her father-confessor. Eward, it appeared, had grown very pressing, and her grandma had urged her to accept him as the best of her admirers. The old dame had not observed the trend of matters with Ernest. In a house where weekend-borners came and went, and the landlady had a pretty granddaughter, there were strings of ardent admirers who came and went like the weeks, and in all probability transferred their weekend-affections as frequently and with as great pleasure as they did their person, and the old lady was too sensible to place any reliance in their earnestness, while Don too was very level-headed in the matter. Thus Ernest, if considered anything more than my friend, would have merely been placed in the weekend category. The old lady, not feeling so vigorous as usual, was anxious to have Don settled, and had tried to put a spoke in Dora Eward's wheel, by threatening Don with deprivation of her coveted singing lessons did she not receive him favourably. Don, in a fit of the blues, probably brought on by seeing the announcement of Ernest's departure, had accepted Eward conditionally. The conditions were that he should wait two years and keep the engagement entirely secret, and she had promised her grandma that she would think of marriage with him at the end of that time, provided her vocal studies should be continued till then. That's the way I'll keep grandma agreeable to pay for the lessons, and in that time do you think I'll be able to go on the stage and do what I like and be somebody? Ask to the girl from out the depths of her inexperience. And what of Dora? He can go back to Dora Cowper then. I'll tell him I was only pulling his leg, like he said about her. It will do him good. You might break his heart, I said with mock compassion. Break his heart? His heart? He's got the sort of heart to be compensated by a good plate of roast beef and plum pudding, like a good many more. Will he consent to this? He'll have to, or do the other thing. He can please himself which. I don't care a hang. He said that if I would marry him soon he would let me continue the singing lessons and get me a lovely piano. All the soft-soaked men always give a girl beforehand. I wondered if he'd think me one of the folks who would swallow it. Couldn't I see, as soon as I was married, all the privileges I would get would be to settle down and drudge all the time till I was broken down, and telling the same hair lifting towels against marriage, as said by every other married woman one meets? And dawn her cheeks flushed and her white teeth gleaming between her pretty lips looked the personification of furious irritation. All I care for now is to get the singing lessons, as long as I don't have to do anything too bad to get them. I suddenly turned on her and asked, Honestly, why did you throw that dish of water on Ernest Bresselor? As unexpectedly attacked her answer slipped out before she had time to prevaricate. Because I was a mad-headed silly fool, the biggest idiot that ever walked, that's why I did it. Do you know that it hurt him very, very keenly? No answer. Do you know that he cared more for you than he understood himself? No answer. Dawn, do you care? Not in that way, but oh, I care terribly that I made such a fool of myself, had it been anyone else it wouldn't have mattered, but he will think I did it because I was an ignorant commoner who knew no better. That's what stings. But I'm not going to think any more of it. I'm going to give up my life to singing, and it doesn't matter. I suppose I'll never see him again, and he'll never know that I did it out of ignorance. I smiled at the despondence in her tone as I extinguished the kerosene lamp-light. There is a stage in the course of most love affairs when the night is despised and rejected by the lady, when the sun and the soul of life depart, and he finds no more pleasure in it, when he is seized with an irresistible desire to go forth in the world, and by his prowess dazzle all mankind for the purpose of attracting one pair of eyes. The same occurs to the lady, and she determines to make all men fall at her feet by way of illustrating to one adamantine heart that he was adulled to have passed over her charms. And this young lady, of the rose and lily complexion, and night of the bright-hued locks and her cullian muscles, being young, sufficiently young to be downcast by imaginary stumbling blocks, had breached it. Goosey gander-night, gander-goosey lady. I smiled again, for in my pocket was a letter that morning received from the former himself, stating that he had been booked for a trip to the St. Louis Exposition, but had flung it up at the last moment in favour of seeing how Les got on with the election, and that he would be back in Nanoon before polling day. Considering he could have seen how the election progressed equally as well in Sydney as Nanoon, and that to see how his step-brother polled when he took little interest in politics, had grown preferable to a trip to America, quite contented me regarding the probable termination of affairs. However, I did not show this letter, as in matchmaking, like in good cooking, things have to be done to the turn, and this was not the opportune turn. Oh well, I said, so long as you don't let your little arrangement get abroad, I don't expect it will harm you it. No fear of it getting abroad, I have threatened him if it does that, a contradiction that will be true will also get abroad, by being put in the Nanoon advertiser. Next night, however, I found Dawn stamping on something glittering that spread about the floor, the by-inquiry elicited. That infernal Dory Eward has had the check to give me a ring, and that's what I've done with it, and that's all the hope he has of ever marrying me, she exclaimed, bringing the heel of her high arched foot another thump on the fragments. He's a bit too quick with his signs and badgers of slavery, he's so complacent with himself, and thinks he's ousted the red-headed mug, as he calls him, that I hate him. He has a right to be complacent, you have given him reason to be. He is one you, so you have told him, and he believes you. Yes, I know, and it makes me all the madder to think of it. I suppressed a chuckle, even before attaining my teens, I had never been so splendidly, autocratically young as this beautiful, high-spirited creature. Let things settle a while, and then we'll pour them off the dregs, I advised. CHAPTER XXI. Outside politics the next item of interest on the clay program was the reappearance of Mr. H. who came for afternoon tea, during which he invited himself to evening tea later on, and before it took Dorn's time in the drawing room, trying some late songs. Dorn averred that it was with difficulty she had restrained from setting fire to him or attacking him with the piano's door. He got so far with his love-making on this occasion that he had asked Dorn to take a little walk with him, which he had readily consented to do, as it would enable her to entrap him for the towering and feathering upon which she had determined. He is going to meet me over among the grapes in the shade of the Ossage breakwind. Do you think we will be able to manage him? Let us be sure to have everything well arranged," whispered Dorn to me, as we came to evening tea. Near the appointed time of Trist, when the first division of the western mail was roaring by, the warm red lights from its windows shedding a glow by the viaduct, she and I betook ourselves to the far end of Grandma Clay's vineyard, where we were securely screened by the Ossage orange hedge on one side, and the grape cranes and their stakes on the other. Dorn carried a two-pound trickle tin filled with tar, and which had been sitting on the end of the stove during the afternoon to melt into working order. Carrie, who had entered into the affair with Vim, had her share of the arrangements in readiness, and was secreted near the house to act a sentinel, and to run to our assistance if summoned by a pre-arranged whistle. Dorn placed me in the superannuated hair-brune with which she had armed me, behind a grapevine, and herself took up a position before it, and beside a hole about eighteen inches deep and two feet square which she had excavated. Mr. Paunch was soon to be heard tripping and blundering along, while the starlight, to which our eyes had grown accustomed, showed the river where the dead girl, whom we were there to avenge, had ended her miserable existence. Dorn, my pet, where are you? First the grapevines!" he gasped. I'm here, Uncle Darling, she responded, the last two words under her breath. Directed by her voice, he neared till we could discern his bulk. My little queen! he exclaimed, the tone of his voice betraying that which defiled the crisp glory of the night for as far as it carried. Just wait a minute till I see where we are, said Dorn, or we will be getting all tangled up in these canes. With this she started back, causing him to do likewise, and, drawing a swab on a stick from the pot in her hand, she brought a consignment of the black sticky tar, a resounding smack on his face, and, following it with others, thick and fast, exclaimed, There, there, that's all for you! Mr. Paunch naturally stepped backwards into the excavation, as designed, and sat down as completely and largely helplessly as one of his figure could be counted upon to do, and, coming to Dorn's assistance, I planted the broom on his chest, and bore with my feeble strength upon him. It was quite sufficient to detain him, seeing he was now stretched on the broad of his back, with his amidship departments founded in two feet of indentation. Dorn thoroughly plastered his face and head, and, in spitting to keep his mouth clear, he lost his false teeth. He attempted to bellow, jabbing his mouth full. Dorn soon cowed him into quiethood. Shut up, you old fool! If you make a noise, we have six more girls waiting in a boat to fling you into the river and drag you up and down for a while, tied onto a rope like a porpoise. Do you think you'll float? This had the desired effect, though he spluttered a little. What is the meaning of this? Have you all gone mad? I met you here at your own request to speak about helping you with your singing, and you've evidently put a wicked construction on my action. I demand a full explanation and an abject apology." Well, said Dorn, punctuating her remarks with the little dabs of the tar, the explanation is that we're doing this to show what we think of a murderer. Even if Miss Flipp had not drowned herself, but had lived to be an outcast, you would still be a murderer of her soul. What's this? He blusted. We have several witnesses ready to give evidence regarding all that passed between you and the unfortunate girl, supposed to be your niece. During your midnight calls upon her, I interposed, speaking for the first time. So blarph or pretense of any kind on your part, as I'm availing, remain silent and hear what we intend to say. We're dealing with this case privately, continued Dorn, because the laws are not fixed up yet to deal with it publicly. Old alligators, one couldn't call you men, and it's enough to make decent men squirm that you should be at large and be called by the same name, can act like you and yet be considered respectable. But this is to show you what decent women think of your likes. And their spirits are with us in armies tonight in what we are doing. They'd all like to be giving your sort of wipe from the tarpot, and then if you were satellite it would not be half sufficient punishment for your crimes. We haven't a law to squash you yet, but soon as we can we'll make one that the likes of you shall be publicly tarred and feathered by those made outcasts by the system of morality you patronise. Virmantly said this ardent and practical young social reformer, who is more rabid than a veteran temperance advocate in fighting for her ideal of social purity. There was silence a moment while we listened to ascertained was there any likelihood of our being disturbed, but the only man made sounds breaking the noisy crickets chorus with a rumble of vehicles along the high road and the shunting of the engines at the station, so I chimed in with promised support. Yes, good women have to continually suffer the degradation of your type in all life's most sacred relations. They have to endure you at their board and in their homes, and leering at their sweet young daughters, and a lack. Many in shame and humiliation own your stamp as their father or the father of their sons and daughters. They have had to endure it with a smile and hear it bolstered up as right, but those whose moral illumination has taken place would be with us in armies tonight if they could. I'm dying to give him a piece of my mind, said Carrie coming up. How do you like our little illustration of what we think of you? We've done it out of a long small drawing of resentment against your reign, and this is a species of tribulation to find that the majority of Australian men are with us, because in the vote they have furnished us with means of redress, and Carrie finished her previously prepared speech by throwing a clot of dirt on him. My gray hair should have protected me, he muttered. You mean they should have protected Miss Flip, said Dawn, and when a man with gray hairs carries on like this the crime is twice as deadly. There was nothing about gray hairs when you used a lead comb and got yourself up to kill. I thought you didn't want to make in a special feature of them, and that's why I'm dying them this beautiful treacle-y black. They'll look boska when I'm done. Get up out of that, lest I'm tempted to do you a permanent injury, I said, taking the broom of him. You can go to the stable, said Dawn, and I hope you won't contaminate it. Carrie has a lantern and some grease and hot water, so you can clean yourself there and put on your overcoat. Never let us hear of you on a platform spouting about moral bills again, unless you say it is on account of the practical experience you've had of the need of them to save weak and foolish young women from the clutches of such as you. Mr. Poynt arose with difficulty, while Dawn struck matches to see what he was like, and a more deplorably ludicrous spectacle never could be seen in a pantomime. The only pity of it was that it was not a punishment more frequently meted out to the sinners of his degree. He raved and stuttered how he would move in the matter, but Dawn, who had a commendable fearlessness in carrying out her undertakings, only laughed merry little peels and told him the best way for him to move in the tar was towards the stable, and the best way to move out of it was by aid of grease, soap, hot water and soda. The expression of his eyes rolling and glaring amid the black was quite eerie, but eventually we reached the stable, where Carrie instructed him how to clean himself, while Dawn jeered at him during the operation. Having cleaned his face somewhat, he hid his neck and clothes in his overcoat, which Carrie handed, put on his hat, muffled his face in his handkerchief, and went away, Dawn administering a parting shot. Now, Uncle Porch, dear, next time you go ogling and leering round a decent girl, remember, though she may be so situated that she has to endure you, yet she feels just as we do, that is, if she is a decent girl, whose eyes have been open to the facts of life. I feel better than I have done for a long time, she concluded, as bearing the implements used in the adventure, we three, who had agreed upon secrecy made towards the house. So do I, said Carrie, if we could only do it to all who deserve the like, it would be grand. End of Chapter 22 Chapter 23 of Some Everyday Foken Dawn by Miles Franklin This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Universal Adult Suffrage Part 1 Electioneering matters ripened, and so did Carrie's love affair with Larry Whitcombe. In fact, it got so far that she gave Grandma notice, and announced her intention of going to a married sister's home for that process, known as getting her things ready. While Larry, in keeping up his end of the stick, bought a neat cottage and began furnishing it in the style approved by his circle, with bright linoleum on the floors, plus chairs in the parlour, and china ornaments on the over mantles. Mrs. Bray, one of those very everyday folk, whose God was Mammon, and who naturally hung on every word issuing from a person of means while she would ignore the most inimitable witticism from an impecunious individual, began to regard the lady help from a new point of view. She mightn't have done so bad for herself after all. Some of these girls knocking about the world, not having nothing to their name, don't bork at things the same as you and me would, who's being used to plenty and like to pick our goods, so to speak. The way things is, Larry is as likely as most to be in a good position yet. Was a sample of the modified sentiments falling from her full red lips. Carrie was to remain a clays until after the election day, so that she could cast her vote for Leslie Walker. The political candidate, thus favoured, scarcely allowed three days to pass without personally or by proxy, stumping the noon end of the electorate. His last meeting in the citizens' hall was jam-packed an hour before the advertised time of speaking. The candidate, on this occasion, made no fresh utterances to entertain. He merely repeated the catch-cries of his party. But the air was heavily charged with human electricity, and the questions and barricing of the crowd were supremely diverting. Are you in favour of the chows going to South Africa? Bald one-elector. My dear fellow, we are going to govern New South Wales, not South Africa. Yes, but when we sent contingents out to fight for the Empire and the Transvaal, do you think it fair that white men should be passed over in favour of chows in the South African labour market? This question being ignored, another was interjected. Are you in favour of the newspapers running New South Wales? Certainly not. This being a satisfactory answer, the old favourite question, are you in favour of black gins wearing white stockings, was put. And the candidate having assured us that, provided they could manage the laundry bill, he certainly was in favour of these ladies wearing any hosiery they preferred, and the loud guffaw which greeted this information having subsided, he continued. Now, don't vote for me, or Henderson, vote for the best measures for the country. Henderson was driving the personal ticket of having lived among them, hence this warning. I think it an unparalleled impertinence for a man to ask an intelligent body of electors to vote for him. When there's a swell bloke like you in the field, pip pip, hooray, cock-a-doodle-doo came the chorus, the pip pip was a new sound to them, having been introduced to represent the noise made by the propulsion of a motor-car, in which set the candidate shone. Are you in favour of gas and water running up the one pipe, inquired another, when the din had once more fallen to comparative silence? Do you think that ladies ought to wear big boots now that they've got the vote? All such important questions, having been put, the chairman called for three cheers for Mr Walker. Three cheers for Henderson, yelled the rubble at the back, which were given deafeningly, and the candidate, with the lively tact which bade fair to develop into his most prominent characteristic, joined in the cheers for his opponent till someone had the grace to call, three cheers for Mr Walker now, and in the most delightfully uproarous holiday-spirited clamour thus ended the last meeting but one before the election. This was fixed for the 6th of August, and notwithstanding there being several other towns in the electorate, equally as important as Nanoon on polling youth, both candidates were to make their final speech there at the same hour. During the week intervening, Leslie Walker's ladies committee were very busy in the construction of dainty rosettes of pink and blue ribbon to be borne by his followers, and not to be outdone, Henderson's committee of mere men, armed themselves with little squares of hat-band ribbon of red, white and blue, the ministerial colours. These were not such dainty badges as the rosettes, but they served the purpose equally well, and the sternosex, in our present stage of evolution, ever to be trusted to make up in downright usefulness what they lack in mere prettiness, had attached a safety pin to each piece of ribbon for its masculinly substantial affixing. Part 2 Polling eve arrived, and the ministerialists having secured the hall, the oppositionists had perforced to hold an open-air meeting. We attended the hall first, intending to move onto the street entertainment later, and Dawn was attacked by an old dame in the opposing camp, because she was displaying Walker's colours. If I liked him, I'd go and stand in the street and listen to him, not take up the room of them as has a hall hired for him by the best man, who has lived among us, and not some city lardee-dar married to a hussy off the stage, and who had women who might be any character going round speaking for him, she tiraded, and turning to me aggressively demanded, Where are your colours? Could you supply me with some? I replied, and only too pleased she squalled to an urchin who was distributing the squares plus a safety pin. I was such a well-poised rail-sitter that I was entitled to wear both colours, and as this one was being ostentatiously fastened to the lapel of my overjacket, I remembered the injunction to live at peace with all. A brass band played the people in, and a trio of youngsters unfurled red, white, and blue parachutes, alias scamps, alias ginghams, alias umbrellas, which were a popular feature of the turn. The committee appeared on the platform one by one, each received with noisy approval, and one facetiously wearing a rosette the size of a large cabbage, was tended a particularly deafening ovation. After these, creptenderson, who though not a particularly inspiring individual, was wildly and vociferously cheered for everything and nothing, and after listening a while to his catch-cries, which differed from those of Walker, only in the irritatingly halting and unimpressive way they were delivered, we rose and scrambled our way out, cheered by the old dame as we went, and our departure was further commented upon from the platform by the speaker himself, in the words, getting too hot for some of the ladies, which, if correct, could not by any means have been attributed to the winter air or the dull and weakly mordland speech he was trying to deliver. Walker spoke from a balcony crowded by devotees, mostly women, to an audience in the street, which was further enlivened by the fighting of the numerous dogs I have previously mentioned, as addicted to holding municipal meetings. Their loud differences of opinion occasionally drowned for speakers, and the main street being also the public thoroughfare, in fact, no lesser place than the Great Western Road. There was no bylaw or political etiquette to prevent the ministerial ban from strolling that way at intervals, so much to the delight of all who were out for fun and the annoyance of those who were sensibly interested in the practical welfare of their country, and who imagined that the policy of this party would materially better matters. The cut and dried denouncement of the ministry was at times drowned by strains of Molly Riley, he's a jolly good fellow, and see the conquering hero comes. The followers of Walker contended that Henderson was the worst of scorpions to thus come to Nanoon on the last night, but considering that he had only addressed Nanoon once to Walker's thrice, as an impartial wiggle-waggle, I could not help seeing that the ministerialists had most cause for complaint. Dawn pinned the badge I had acquired to the coattail of a local bank manager, who, though on her side, had lately distinguished himself by a public denouncement of women's rights, so savagely virulent and ideologically tyrannous in principle as to suggest that his household contained representatives of the shrieking sisterhood, who had been one too many for him. The boys who saw the joke enjoyed it very much indeed, as he strolled along with the self-importance befitting so prominent a citizen. The beautiful voice of the candidate Rose and Fell, occasionally halting till the usual cheers or guffaws died away, and the meeting ended in the customary way. What good to the country was likely to accrue from it? On the other hand, what harm? To be abroad in the open air with comfort at that time of year and at that hour of the night illustrated the beautiful climate of that latitude if nothing more, and everyone was harmlessly entertained, for good humour characterised to the whole affair. Tea, coffee and cheese abounded for all comers at the committee rooms of Leslie Walker, the candidate supported by the temperate societies. And on behalf of Oliver Henderson there was an open night at Jiminy's pub, with the result, as published by the oppositionists, that boys of fourteen and sixteen were lying drunk in the gutters. The next day, however, was the culmination of the whole thing. Dawn almost wept that she was not of age to vote, and as I was so comfortably indifferent as to which man won, I offered to cast my vote for the one she favoured, but she declined. That would only be the same as having men having the vote and thinking they know how to represent us, she said. But though she couldn't vote, she worked hard for her side, and with a big rosette of pink and blue decorating her dimpling bosom, and streamers of the same flying from her whip and her pony's headstall, she was out all day driving voters to the booth, where, for the first time in that town, women produced an electoral right. The Federal election had been conducted without them. In the forenoon, Larry Whitcomb drove Carrie to vote in state, otherwise a brand new sulky he had recently purchased, and such as human nature that we were all sufficiently malicious to be secretly pleased that poor old Uncle Jake could not vote at all, because he had only an obsolete red electors' right, and he should have procured an up-to-date blue one. It was a genial sunshiney day, and the lucin and rape fields, and the Chinese gardens on either hand were beautifully green, as Grandma noticed when, during the afternoon, she and I drove in the old sulky to cast our vote. Poor Jake, I'm sorry he can't vote, though he ain't going for my man, she remarked, but then it seemed like a judgment on him for being so napped about the women being set free. That's always the way in life, if you're spiteful about anything, it always comes back on yourself. This street opposite the courthouse, for the time converted into a polling booth, was thronged like a show day with an orderly crowd of citizens of both sexes. The voting had become so congested that vehicle loads of voters were being conveyed over to kangaroo, and each contingent set out amid the cheers of small boys who were most ardent politicians. Laughing and banter were exchanged between people of all ages and classes, one as important as the other, for the time being. As we crowded round the door, a jovial looking man with a twinkle in his eye, as he was unceremoniously shoved against a pillar, announced that women should not have been allowed to vote, for its disastrous results were already evident in this crush. While the equally pleasant-faced policeman, who, as soon as intimation came from within that there was a vacancy, wheeled us in like so many bails of wool, replied, Women jolly well have as much right to vote as men, and more, because they can do it without getting drunk or breaking their heads. Many displayed colours, and some did not. There was the truculent woman who voted as she thought fit, and who loudly advertised this fact. The man who voted for Henderson because he lived in the district, and the woman who supported Leslie Walker because he was rich and would be able to subscribe liberally to all local institutions. A shallow-pated mess favoured Walker because his colours were the prettier, and an adult-pated old man balanced this by voting for Henderson because he shouted, note, to treat to free drinks, and Walker was temperance. There was a silly little flux-and-head woman who also supported the opposition to spite her husband, a Henderson man, and the prototype of Mr. Paunch, because, being overgrungful, he had made tracks for the polling booth alone, leaving his wife to go as best she could. Alas, there was a poor little woman at home who could not vote at all because she had succumbed to the gentle monlinous of Leslie Walker, and her husband being against him had tyrannously taken her right from her. And there was also the woman who would not vote at all because she considered men were superior to women, and boisterously proclaimed this to all who would listen in hopes of carrying favour with the men. But fortunately this, in the case of the best men, is becoming an obsolete bid for popularity. There was the woman who voted for the man her father named, and those electors of each sex who voted to the best of their discernment, great or small. Quite a crop of Uncle Jake's were disenfranchised through their rights being back numbers, and the nobodies who imagined to themselves something altogether too lofty to consider anything so mundane as lawmaking at all were also rather numerous. Ada Grovener's bright happy face shone like a star amid her companions, and she discharged to this duty honestly and thoughtfully as she did all others, recognising it as the practical way of working for the brave, bright ideals guiding her life. Among the electresses were all the same types of vote as cast by men, except that those sold for a glass of beer were not so frequent. And as civilisation climbs higher, universal suffrage, and the better methods of ministration to which it will give birth, will be exercised for the adjustment of the great human question now so trivially divided into squabbles of sex and class. The bright Australian sun shone with genial approval on all, and in the air was a hint of the centre of the Joghuls and violets, so early in that temperate region. Grandma Clay must not be forgotten, for in her immaculate silk cloth, dress and cape, her bonnet of the best material and her lastings, with her spectacles in one hand and her properly prized electoral right in the other, and her irreproachable respectability oozing from her every action, she could not be overlooked. As she neared the door, the gentleman and younger ladies crowding there politely stood back and cancelled their turn in her favour. And Mrs Martha Clay, a flush on her cheeks, a flash in her eyes, and with her splendidly active upright figure, carried valiantly at the age of seventy-five, disappeared within the polling booth to cast her first vote for the State Parliament. What a girl she must have been in those far-off teens when she had handled a team of five in Coburn Coast lumbering coaches, when her curls blowing in the rain and wind had been bronze, when, with a feather-weight bound, she could spring from the high-box seat to the ground. Lucky Jim Clay to have held such vigorous love and splendid personality all his own, all his own to this late day, for the old dame returning said to me, This is a great day to me, and I only wish that Jim Clay had lived to see me vote, and there was a pathetic quiver in the old voice inexpressibly sweet to the ear of one believing in true love. After Grandma Clay, there was myself, a widely different type of voter. In one way it did not matter whether I voted or not. Neither candidate had a clear-cut policy to rescue public affairs from their chaotic state. The electors themselves had no definite idea what they required, but this was in no way alarming. All the materials for national prosperity were at hand. Presently matters would evolve, and the demand for able statesmen would be filled when the demand grew clearly defined. Which man would do most for women and children was also immaterial? The mere fact of women no longer being redressless creatures, but invested with rights of full citizenship was even at that early stage having its effect. Politicians were trimming their sails to catch the great female vote by announcing their readiness to make issues of questions relative to the peculiar welfare of the big bulk of the human race represented by women and children. Inspired by women's newly granted power of electing a real representative of their demands, would be MPs for hastening in one session to insert their platform planks which much haunted womanly influence had been unable to get there during generations of masculine shivery and feminine disenfranchisement. Let the women vote. As Grandma Clay expressed it, it ain't what things actually are, it's all they stand for. For this reason I meant to exercise my right. A sovereign in itself may not be much, but to a starving man within reach of shops see what it means in 20 shillings worth of food. Similarly the right to vote in a self-governed country meant many a mile in the upward evolution of mankind. Countless brave women and good men had sacrificed all that for which the human hard hankers that women should be raised to this estate. And what a coward and insolent ignoramus would I be to lightly consider what had been so dearly bought and hard fought. And so thinking I presented my right, received my ballot paper, and though not bothering to meddle with either candidate's name, I folded it correctly, and for the sake of all that stood behind and ahead of the right to perform this simple action, dropped it in the ballot box. It closed at six o'clock, and then came a lull till the first returns should have time to come in. The candidates were not in Nanun, but Town End, where the head polling booth was situated, though nothing could have exceeded the excitement in Nanun. Grandma said she would wait quietly at home till next day to hear the result. But at nine o'clock the strains of a band, the glow of the town lights like a red jewel through the night, and the sound of distant cheering proved too enticing to us too left alone in the house. So we locked it up, put the pony in the sulky, and sullied forth into the winter night, which in this genial climate was pleasant in an overjacket added to one's ordinary indoor attire. We had the road to ourselves for the strings of vehicles from which it was sold and free for all ahead of us. The candidates had tiny globes of electric light representing their colours hung across the street from their respective committee rooms, and the proprietor of the Nanun advertiser had a splendid placard erected on his office balcony and well-lighted by electricity, on which the names of members were pasted as they were elected, and in view of this had gathered one of the most good-humoured crowds imaginable. Irrespective of party, the hoisting of each name was wildly cheered by the embryo electors, who, being at that time of life, went to yell as a joy, took the opportunity of doing so in full. Leaving Grandma in charge of the vehicle, I got out to reconnoiter and slipped in among the crowd, desiring to be unobserved, but that was impossible. A good-tempered man invariably discovered me behind him, and insisted upon putting me forward where there was a better view of the numbers and names. Let the women have a show. This is their first election, and it ought to be their night. And similarly good-natured remarks in conjunction with the little chai-acking from either party has the numbers fluctuated were to be heard on all sides. Where were all the insults and ignominy that opponents of women franchise had been fearfully anticipating for women if they should consent to lower themselves by going to the polling booth? If one expected the discomfort that non-smokers have to suffer in any crowd owing to the indulgence of this selfish, disgusting and absolutely idiotic vice, it was one of the best-managed crowds I have been among. I aspired, larry and carried, carefully among the shades of the trees on the outskirts of the gathering, and even in the teeth of a political crisis, not so thoroughly up to date, that they could forgo a revival of the old, old story that will outlive voting and many other customs of many other times. Among the crowd of mercurial and lustily cheering boys was my friend Andrew, and a little farther on, lo, the knight himself. A motor-cap was jammed on his warm curls, and a football-guernsey displayed the proportions of his broad chest as his chest afield fell open. While with the gaiety and freedom he lacked when addressing girls, he exchanged comments with some other young fellows, evidently fellow motorists. My feeble pulse quickened out of sympathy with dawn as I caught sight of him. It was easy to understand the hastened throb of her heart upon first becoming aware of his presence, who has not known what it is to unexpectedly recognise the turn of a certain profile or the characteristic carriage of a pair of shoulders, meaning more to the inner heart than had a meteor flushed across the sky. Most of us have known someone whose smile could make heaven or whose indifference could spell hell to us, and those who by some fortuitous circumstances have spent their life without encountering either one, or both these experiences, are still sufficiently human to regret having missed them and to understand how much it could have meant. Had dawn's blue eyes yet discovered the goodly sight, when I presently found her the light in them betrayed that they had. Her face shone with the inward gladness of a princess when she has come into view of a desired kingdom, whether it shall endure or be destroyed and replaced by the grayness of disappointment depends upon the prince reciprocating and making her queen of his heart. Dora Ewood was in attendance, so I dispatched him to ascertain if Grandma were all right and took advantage of his absence to say, I see Ernest has returned to see the result of Leslie Walker's candidature. Then it's a wonder he didn't stay in town and they'll know the results there sooner. She replied with studied indifference. Alpony fell asleep where she stood and in spite of the cheering as though she were well acquainted with women taking a live interest in an election. We let her sleep till twelve, went to Grandma's disappointment. Leslie Walker was more than a hundred votes behind. There were yet other returns to come in but these were not large enough to alter present results. When we left the street was still crowded and the cheering unabatedly vigorous. On our way home Grandma remarked with satisfaction that Dawn seemed to be regarding Ewood sensibly at last, and I seized the opening to inquire if she were really anxious that the girl should marry him. I am if she couldn't get no one better, replied the old lady, and I considered that this condition saved the situation. Part 3 The poll had been taken on a Saturday and on Monday both the elected and defeated candidates appeared in Nanoon to return thanks. The former came into town at the head of a long courtage of vehicles and with the red, white and blue parasols very prominently in evidence. The streets were hung with bunting and at night the newly elected MP was lifted into a buggy in which he was drawn through the streets by youths at the head of a glorified procession led by a brass band. And there were not only little boys covered with electioneering tickets from top to toe and yelling as they marched and waved flags but also little girls now equally with their brothers, electors to be. More power to them and their emancipation. It came on to rain so black umbrellas, big and business-like went up by dozens around the three special ones and became an amusing feature of the train of miscellaneous people who came to a halt within earshot of a balcony in the main street. Henderson was carried upstairs on some enthusiast's shoulders and when landed there followed the usual gasseting and flattery the re-elected member being presented with a gorgeous bouquet of red, white and blue flowers. A little further up the street the Walkerites also held a corroboree where graceful thanks were returned by the opposition candidate who was overloaded with offerings of blue and white violets and narcissy and amid great enthusiasm dragged in a buggy to the railway station. As they came down the street though they had the intention of giving three cheers for the victors as they passed the rabble could not be expected to anticipate such a nice city of feeling and some young irresponsibles attempted to form a barricade across the route. Charge! was then called out by some broad young Walkerites in the lead and mild confusion followed. I was knocked onto the wheel of Leslie Walker's buggy from whence I was rescued by an old gentleman himself minus his piping cap but good-humidly laughing my word aren't the other side dying hard? Take care you and I do not also die hard I replied stepping out of the way of an idiot lad who dressed as a jester in Walker's colours was sitting on a horse whose progress was blocked by the crowd which began jibing at the rider. Dawn, indignant at this, dashed forward like a beautyous and infuriated queen bodicea her cheeks red from excitement and the winter air and with her grandmothers flush in her eyes exclaimed as she took the bridal rain. Cowards to torment a poor fellow she attempted to lead the animal through but the torches of the band were put before it and the indispensable red white and blue parasols swelled in its face till it reared and plunged frantically catching the excited girl a blow on the shoulder with its chest. She must inevitably have been knocked down in the street and been trampled upon but for the intervention of a hand so timely that it seemed it must have been on guard. The noon was by no means an architectural town and the ugliness of its always dirty uneven streets was now accentuated by the mud and rain but the picture under the dripping flags shown up by the torches of the band was very pretty. The sturdy young athlete thus triumphantly in the right place at a necessitous moment held his precious burden with ease and delight and though she was not in any way hurt she did not seem in a hurry to relinquish the arm so willingly and proudly protecting her. The expression on the young man's face as he bent over the beautiful girl was a revelation to some interested observers but not to me. O lucky young lady to be thus opportunity and romantically saved from a painful and humiliating if not serious accident. O happy night to be thus at hand at the psychological moment and where was Dora Ewed then and where was my rescuer apparently he had forgotten that he had rescued me all that to have done so was of moment. Ah neither of us were in the heyday of youth and his only during that rosy period that we extract the full enchantment of being alive and only by looking back from paler days that we understand how intense with the joys gone by. End of Chapter 23 Chapter 24 of some everyday folk and dawn by Miles Franklin this LibriVox recording is in the public domain Little Odds and Ends of Life The electioneering over the town fell into a dullness inconceivable and from which it seemed nothing short of an earthquake could resuscitate it. So great was the lack of entertainment that the doings of the famous Mrs Dr Tinker regained prominence and the old complaints against the inability of the council to better the roads awoke and cried again. Two days following dawn's rescue from the accident Ernest called upon me and occupying one of the stiff chairs before the fireplace under the gorgonian representations of Jim Clay looked hopelessly self-conscious and inclined to blush like a schoolboy every time the door opened but dawn did not make her appearance. I knew he had come hoping that inverting the accident he had been able to illustrate his friendliness towards her and that she would now meet him as of old so that the little incident of the wash-up water could be explained and buried. At last, taking pity on the very natural young hope that was being deferred I excused myself and went in quest of dawn and found her in her room sowing with ostentatious industry. Dawn, won't you come down and speak to Ernest? He has called to see how you are after your adventure. I said with perfect truth though, as a matter of fact, he had studiously refrained from mentioning her. Oh, please don't ask me to go down, she implored excitedly. You seem to have forgotten. Forgotten what? That dish of water she faltered with changing colour and then he saved me so cleverly from being trampled on. If he had ridden over me I wouldn't have cared as it would have made things square. But as it is, can't you understand that I'd rather die than see him? said she in the exaggerated language of the day and burying her face in her hands. I can better understand that you are dying to see him. I returned, pulling her head onto my shoulder. But never mind, you'll see him some other day and it will all come straight in time. I forbore to press her father, but that Ernest might not be too discouraged. I gave him some splendid oranges Andrew had picked for me and said, Miss Dawn kept these for you, but as she is not visible this afternoon I am going to make the presentation. His face perceptibly brightened and also noticeable was the brisk way he terminated his call upon learning that there was no prospect of seeing Dawn that day. I watched him bounding along the path to the bridge, carrying the oranges in his handkerchief and watched also by another pair of eyes from an upstairs window. Carrie left us during that week and as she had now fixed her wedding day the tax of wedding presents had to be met. Grandma, in bidding her goodbye, presented her with a generous check and paid her a fine compliment. I wish you well wherever you go for I never saw another young woman unless it was myself when I was young who could lick you at anything. Carrie's departure put the cap on our quietude at Clay's but soon a movement transpired to stir the stagnation. The outvoted electors of Nanoon were so galled by their defeat that they ignored the British law under which it was their both to live and refused to acknowledge that the man who had been voted in by the majority was constitutionally their representative in Parliament. They also failed to see that he would serve the purpose quite as well as the other man and to publish their sentiments more fully determined to tender Leslie Walker a complimentary entertainment of some kind and present him with a piece of plate not as the other side had it in token of his defeat but owing to the fact that he was actually the representative of Nanoon Town having in that place polled higher than his opponent. The presentation took the shape of a silver apern. This to a man who probably did not know what to do with those he already possessed a wealthy stranger who had contested the electorate for his own glory. Had he been a struggling townsman who at a loss to his business had put up in hopes of benefiting his country to have paid his expenses might have shown a commendable spirit but this was such a pure and simple example of greasing the fatted sow that even those who had supported him openly rebelled grandma clay among them. Wow that's the way women call to a man because he's got a smooth tongue and a little polish sneered Uncle Jake and some of the man hadn't gumption to get the proper right to vote for their man who flew the publicans flag and chuckled to the tag rag chuckled grandma who was delighted to prove that this illustration of crawl had originated with the men. Nevertheless it was decided to present the apern at a select concert or musical evening with Mr and Mrs Leslie Walker sitting on the platform where the audience could gloat upon them. Dawn was asked to contribute to the program and relieved her feelings to me forthwith. The silly crawling ignorant fools she exclaimed. The first item on the program is a solo by Miss Clay says the chairman and I'll come forward and squawk. Next item a recitation by Mrs Thingamabob. Can't you just imagine it? She said in an imitable and exasperated caricature from the folds of her silk kimono. Good heavens! To give a man like that an amateur concert like ours. Do you know they say he is the best amateur tenor in Australia and his wife was a comic opera singer before she married. Solo girl was telling me where I get my singing lessons. You'd think even the galutes of Nanoon wouldn't be so leatherheaded but they'd know their length well enough not to make fools of themselves in this way. I know. Why can't they know too? They like these things themselves and think others ought to like them too. What do they want to be licking Walker's boots at all for? We all voted and worked for him. That was enough. It will just show you the way people will crawl to a bit of money. Oh dear, how Walker must be grinning in his sleeve. I won't sing for them. But she was not to escape so easily. A member of the committee asked Grandma would she allow her granddaughter to contribute a solo? Of course, said the old lady. Ain't I getting her singing lessons to that end? And down went the girl's name on the program and there was war in the Clay House hold on that account. I can't sing yet, protested dawn. I can't sing in the old style and can't manage the new style yet. Rubbish, said Grandma. Who could not begot to grasp the intricacies of voice production? What am I paying good money away for? It's near three months now and nothing to show for it yet. If you can't sing now, you ought to give it best at once. And if you can't sing a song for Mr Walker and show him you've got a better voice than some, I think it common sense to stop your lessons at the end of the quarter. My teacher wouldn't let me sing. And who's the most to do with you? Your teacher or me, pray. Who's he to say when you shan't sing or the other thing? And thus she decided the point, but dawn each night dwelt upon the trouble while I sought to comfort her. It is best to sing to the people who know all about singing. They will see you have a good voice and appreciate it far more than could be ignorant. A fortnight had to elapse before the date of the concert and during that time Carrie's successor arrived in the form of a stout general as dawn a bird she had sufficient companion in me and that a kitchen woman was preferable to a lady help. The pruning of a portion of the vineyard, which had been delayed by electioneering matters till now, also took place during this time, and Andrew and Uncle Jake, when working in the far corner, made the extraordinary discovery of an odontological gold plate of the best quality and in perfect order, the find created quite a sensation. As Grunmar said, it bore evidence that someone had been stealing grapes during the season, for any person legitimately in the vineyard would have instituted a search for such a valuable piece of property, and for a person who could afford such a first class gold plate to steal grapes showed what some people were. It did indeed, for this person had been want to clandestinely enter her premises to perpetrate a far lower grade of crime than pilfering her grapes or destroying her vineyard. The incident trickled into the columns of the Nanoon Advertiser in conjunction with the facetious remark that the invader would have had to take a lot of grapes to compensate him for what he had lost, and it was further stated that the article being useless except to him, its size bespoke at a man's, for whom it had been modelled, he could have it upon giving satisfactory proof that he was the owner. Needless to say, Mr. Paunch did not claim his property, and this souvenir was the last we heard of him. Andrew took it to Mr. S. Messer Dentist, the man who had seemed to consider it unprofessional that to fill my teeth should take time, and with him the lad bargained that in return for the plate he was to tinker up those teeth whose aching I had allayed with the carbolic acid prescribed for me by the other dentist. Dawn and I chuckled in secret, sent a copy of the Nanune Advertiser to Carrie, and remarked that it was an ill wind that blew no one any good. During the fortnight preceding the concert, Ernest Breslaw called at Clay several times to see me, and saw me unattended by any extras in the form of a beautiful young girl, for Dawn blushingly avoided him. He had to fall back on such outside skirmishing as rowing me on the river, and though there was no longer an impending election to furnish him with excuse for loitering in Nanune, he did not speak of deserting it in a hurry. He had reached that degree of amorous collapse when he could manage to show the haunts of his desired young lady regardless of circumstances, and grandma began to suspect that his attentions had a little more staying power than those of the weekend admirer. Seeing that the red-headed mug had reappeared, in the hope of permanently extirpating him, Dory Ewood was anxious to announce his engagement, but with threats of immediate extermination, if his should so much as give a hint of it, Dawn kept him in abeyance, and altogether behaved so erratically that Andrew candidly published his belief that she had gone rutty. Ernest profit himself as our escort to the Walker presentation, that Ewood having previously secured Dawn, Breslaw had to be satisfied with my company. I had already presented Andrew with a ticket, and as I could not now discard him, I resolved to ignore the injunctions to be found in etiquette books and accept attentions from two gentlemen at once. Thus it happened that I, at the despised gray hair stage, sat in state with the most attentive cavalier on either hand, while handsome young ladies sat all alone. We had entered September, and the early flowers had lifted their heads on every hand in this valley, where they grew in profusion, and that evening were in evidence at women's throats, in men's coats, and in young girl's hair. The stage was a bower of heavenly-centred bloom, and many among the audience held bouquets the sight of a broccoli in readiness for presentation to the guests of the evening. Ernest was holding the pony, which was rested, while Andrew buckled her to the sulky, when Dawn came upon the scene after the concert, and presented me with a huge bunch of flowers, and Ewood also got his nag ready for homegoing. Dawn had not met Ernest since the night in the street, and even now affected not to notice him, so thinking at time to take the situation by the horns, I said, Here is Mr. Ernest. You didn't see him, because he was standing in the shade. Thus encouraged he came forward and sturdily put out his hand, and Dawn could not very well fail to observe that as it was of a substantial build, and held where the light shone full on it, so she was constrained to meet it with her own, and received, as she afterwards confessed, a lingering and affectionate pressure. It was not of Ernest, however, but of Mrs. Walker that she talked that night as we prepared for rest, with our wash-hand basins full of violets that had been crowded out of the quantity given to the defeated candidate's wife. Fancy being lovely like she is, and looking at her I've given up all hope. I suppose all I'm fit for is Mrs. Ewood, Mrs. Dora Ewood. Do my housework in the morning and take one of these sulkies full of youngsters for a drive in the afternoon, like all the other humdrum, tame hen, respectable married women. It's a sweet prospect, isn't it? She said vexedly, throwing herself on the bed. Don't be absolutely absurd. Look in the glass, and you will see a far more beautiful face, and one possessed of other qualities that make for success. Oh, nonsense! You only say that to put me in a good humour! But how do women find such good matches as Leslie Walker? That's what I want to know! She continued. Either by being beautiful or using strategic ability in the Great Lottery. Mrs. Walker probably used both these accomplishments. You can achieve similar results by means of the first, without the necessity of developing the second. Silly girl! Marry Leslie Walker's step-brother, Ernest Breslau. And if you do not live happily ever after, it will not be because you have not been furnished with a better opportunity than most people. She did not remark the relationship I last divulged, showing that Ernest's confidences must have included it. A girl can't make a man marry her, was all she said. I don't know how to use strategy and wouldn't crawl to do such a thing if I could. Neither would I, but if I loved a man and saw that he loved me, I'd secretly hoist a little flag of encouragement in some place where he could see it. I made reply. End of Chapter 24 Next morning was gloriously spring-like. The violets raced their heads in thick mats of blue and white in every available cranny of the garden, and other enclosures, where they were allowed to assert themselves, while other plants were opening their garlands to replace them, and the air breathed such a note of barminess that Ernest came to invite me to a boat ride. To the practice die there were certain indications that he hoped for Dawn's company too, but this was out of the question, as under ordinary circumstances it is rarely that girls in Dawn's walk of life can go pleasuring in the forenoon without previous warning, or what would become of the half-cooked mid-day dinner. So we set out by ourselves, and as the boat shot out to the middle of the stream between the peach orchards, just giving a hint of their coming glory, and past the erstwhile naked great canes, not cut away and replaced by a vivid green, the roller made a studdedly casual remark. Your friend Miss Dawn spoke to me again at last. I wonder why on earth she threw that dish of water on me. Did she ever say that she had anything against me? No. If you could be a girl for half an hour, you'd know that the man to whom she shows most favour is frequently the one she most despises, while he whom she ignores or ill treats is the one she most warmly regards. How on earth is that? Oh, a species of shyness like your own, which makes you talk freely of Dawn and Ada Grofner, because you have no particular interest in them, whereas there is some name you guard jealously from me, I cunningly replied. Is it true that Miss Dawn is engaged to Eward? If she is, let me know in time to send her a wedding present. I'd like to, because she's your friend. He said with such elaborate unconcern that I had difficulty in suppressing a smile. His step-brother, the Dilettante, would never have been so clumsily transparent in a similar case. Nonsense, she's as much engaged to you as to him, I said reassuringly, and that was all that passed between us on that subject. He energetically confined our conversation to the lovely Ada from the Lucent Fields we were passing on the riverbank. But I was not surprised that the afternoon's post brought Dawn a letter that smothered her in blushes and plunged her in a gay abstraction too complete for either Uncle Jake or Andrew to penetrate. When we were once more in our big room, commanding a view of the western mail with its cozy lights twinkling across the valley, she extended me the privilege of perusing one of the simplest and most straightforward of ours of love from a young man to a maiden. It has been my delight to encounter. Dear Miss Dawn, you will be very surprised at receiving such a letter from me, but I hope you will not be offended. I have loved you since the first day I saw you, but have kept it so well to myself that no one has suspected it, perhaps not even yourself. Will you be my wife? I love you better than life, and am willing to wait any number of years up to ten if you can only give me hope of eventually winning you. I do not expect you to care for me at once, but if you can give me hope that you do not dislike me, I shall be content to wait. You are so beautiful and good. I am afraid to ask you to marry me, but I would try hard to make you happy, and being in a position to live comfortably, you could continue any studies you like. Here followed a most business-like and lucid statement of his affairs and the ending, please do not keep me waiting long for a reply, and let me know if I am to interview your grandmother. I am sure I can satisfy her in regard to my position and antecedents. Yours, devotedly, are Ernest Breslau. He was honest, not fearing that his income might tempt a girl of Dawn's or indeed any other station. He had in no way attempted to test her affection and mentioning it. After the manner of his type, one of the best, he would place complete reliance where he loved and feel sure of the same in return. Good heavens! Has he really all that money? she exclaimed. So I believe. I'd be able to live the life I want, then, learn to sing, have lovely dresses, and travel about. I am not thinking only of his money, but don't you think people who marry are nothing of fools and selfish? A woman who marries a man who is only able to keep her and her children in starvation is a fool, and a man who wants a woman to suffer what wives have to and drudge in poverty is a selfish brute. That's what I've always thought. As for gassing about love when there's no comfort to keep it alive, that's about as foundationalist as we, always being supposed to think men are superior, even the ones a blind idiot could see are inferior. Are you going to marry him? I want to, but what on the earth am I to do with Dora Eward? Break his heart to keep earnest together? Break his heart? It's the style to break, isn't it? He can have Dora Kalpa or Ada Gravena. They both want him. The grandma got wind of the situation, though. She'd put my pot on properly. She'd carry on like fury and let me have neither of them. That would be the end of it. I can't make out why I've fooled with that Dora at all. I'll write and ask Ernest to give me a week, and with her characteristic promptitude, she sat down and favoured a style as unadorned as that of the knight himself. Dear Mr. Ernest, your letter received. I care for you, but cannot give you a definite answer at once. There may be obstacles in the way of accepting your kind offer. If you will give me a week to consider matters, I will answer you definitely then. Yours with love, Dawn. As she got into bed, she said with a happy giggle, He says he loved me from the first day he saw me, and you thought he only came to see you. Well, my dear, you can't expect people whose hearts are broken from overwork and whose hair is grey from want of love to be as quick as beautiful young ladies whose affairs have come to a happy head with a splendid young knight. And what I inwardly thought was that at all events I had discovered the knight's symptoms long before he had done so. Would you like Mr. Ernest and me to marry? she asked. Oh, I don't object, I laconically replied. Well, I'll marry him as soon as ever he likes if I can get rid of Dora. I'll see Dora and see if I can do it without a rumpus first, but if he hasn't got sense to be quiet. Well, I won't give in without a fight. Ernest mightn't like it if he knew, but I bet he will have to keep dark about worst things on his part if I only knew. He's different to ninety-nine percent of the men if he hasn't. She said as she opened the French lights wider to the crisp breath of centre night and blew out the lamp. You don't mind his hair being red now, do you? I maliciously inquired in the darkness, and though she faint sleep I knew that owing to a delightful wakefulness another beside myself heard the splendid music of the trains that night. The style of her breathing told that she was still awake some hours later when the old moon climbed high and came shining, shining down the valley, divided in two by its noble river, and laid out in orchard and agricultural squares. The great silver light outlined the glorious hills that walled the west away from the little towns and villages, and here and there a gleaming white cluster of tombstones bespoke the graveyards, where slept the early pioneers and the folk who had followed them, and which, one by one, as opening buds or withered stalks were settling their last earthly score. The little homesteads lay royally, peacefully free from danger of molestation amid their wealth of trees and vines. Cottages raised on piles and vain in the distinction of small protruding gables, pretentiously called bay windows, and with keys rusting for want of use in the cheap patent door locks were quickly superseding their earlier dwellings. These squat old cots generally had thresholds higher than the floors. The homemade slab floors knew no fastening, but a latch with a string unfailingly on the outside day and night, and with their beetling verandas and tiny box skillions were crouchingly hard set upon the genial plain. End of CHAPTER XXV. CHAPTER XXVI of some everyday-foken dawn by Miles Franklin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. OFF WITH THE OLD Dawn was not a procrastinator, so she lost no time in sending Euda a message to meet her next night at eight, at the corner of the Gulagong Road for the purpose of a private tour. She was going to take something to Mrs. Rooney Mollignou and the baby as an excuse to be abroad at that hour of the night, and requested me to accompany her so that she would not be saddled with Andrew as a protector. We sat out immediately after tea, and had time for a chat with Mrs. Rooney Mollignou about her son. Both were enjoying good health thanks to the opportune arrival of a well-to-do sister, and the fact that, in honour of an heir to his name, the father had lately abstained from alcoholic drinks, and made an occasional pound by writing letters for people. We had some trouble to dissuade him from escorting us home, but emerged at last without him, and within a few minutes of eight o'clock. The cloudless, bruseless night, though a little chilly, was heavy with the odours of spring, and free from the asperity of frost. The only sounds breaking at stillness were the trains passing across the long viaduct approaching the bridge. The vehicles which met from the two roads, the Great Western, leading in from Kangaroo, and the Gulagong, coming from the thickly populated valley down the river banks, had gone into town earlier for the Saturday night promenade, and we practically had to ourselves the broad highway, showing white in the soft starlight. I walked behind Dawn, and she, having found Eward, who had been first at the Trist, they came back towards the river a few hundred yards, and stopped behind some shrubbery, while I took up a place on the other side of it, as directed beforehand by this very businesslike young person, to act as witness in case of future trouble. Well, Dawn, what has turned up? said the young man after a pause. There's something that might explain the situation better than a lot of talk. Claude, alias Dory Eward, struck a match, and upon discovering the fragments of his engagement ring in the piece of paper she had handed to him, was silent for a minute or two, and then said, Dawn, so you want it to be all off? I knew that this long while, and have been mustering pluck to say so, but it seems you've got in before me. Perhaps you were going to say you were pulling my leg, like you did with Dora Calpa? No, I was not, and his tone was exceedingly manly. I was going to say that as much as I care, I'd rather let you go free than hold you to your agreement, when I saw you didn't care for me. You were mighty smart! No, I'm only a dunce, but even a dunce can liven up sufficiently when he's in love, to see whether his sweetheart cares for him or not. And you didn't take much pains to hide the state of affairs, he said, with a rueful laugh. I know enough about girls to know when they really care. Practice like, said Dawn. You can say that if you like, he gravely replied. Well, things were rather mixed, but now I know what I want. And that you don't want me, he interposed. Well, you can marry Ada Grofner, or Dora Calpa. We can leave that to the future. It doesn't enter into this question at all, he said, with the dignity that made the girl ashamed of herself. There will be no difficulty about my marrying. The main thing is whether you are all right. It's easier for a man than a girl if he does make a hash of it. Oh, Claude, don't be so good and generous, or you'll make me mad, because I'm not going to have you after all. Good and generous? Nonsense. I'm only doing what any decent foe I would do. You'd do as much and more for me if things were reversed, he said, taking her hand. Great Scott, what sort of crawler did you take me for? Did you think I'd cut up nasty about it? Surely you knew I'd wish you well, even if you were not for me. But won't you tell me who it is that has put my light out? Can't you guess? Well, I suppose it's the red-headed mug put in Dawn. Yes, I saw it all along, but that night in the street finished matters. I knew my chances were as dead as a doornail after that. You only took me because something went out of gear between you, and that's why you made me keep it dark. Oh, I don't want to say that, Claude. No, but I'm saying it. And now, is there anything else I can do for you except wish you luck? Only promise not to let Grandma or anyone know. Did you think it necessary to tell me that? I'd not be likely to howl about my setback. You needn't fear. I'll act with common sense and pull through. I won't drown myself and haunt you or any of that sort of business, he said cheerfully. Oh, thank you more than I can say, she exclaimed enthusiastically. I hope you'll soon find someone better than I. Someone as good as yourself. Goodbye. Well, Dawn, I wish you joy anyhow. And good luck to the fellow who has got the best of me. He seems an all right sort from what I can make out, and will be able to give you everything you want. Goodbye. He drew her to him, and as she did not resist, kissed her warmly on the cheek and let her go. He wanted to see her to her gate, but she dismissed him, and he walked away through the spring night whistling a cheery air. When he was safely gone, I came out from my hiding, and taking Dawn's arm moved homewards. The girl was weeping, but so softly that I was not aware of it till her warm tears fell on my hand. Oh, the never-ending fret and fume of being. When it is not discarded love or jealousy that is agitating the human bosom, it is unsatisfied ambition, the worry of parental responsibility, or loneliness and regret that one has never tasted them. The past. What has it been? The future. What will it be? The present. What does it matter? But a thousand curses on its pinpricks, wounding like sword-thrusts, and which all must endure. Oh, dear, I wish he hadn't been so nice, sobbed the girl. His made me feel so ashamed that I don't think I'm fit to marry honest. I wish he had been nasty to me, and then I wouldn't have cared. But you don't think he cares, do you? Listen to him whistling so merrily. It is not those who whine loudest who feel most. But men don't really have any feelings in this sort of thing, do they? Feeling is not peculiar to any section or sex of the community, but to a percentage of all humanity. This is my belief, but I cannot attempt to judge which feel and which do not. Who would have dreamt of him being so sweet-natured about it? Nobility of character and unselfishness are also traits we cannot find in any set place. I wish I hadn't been such a cat. I can't forgive myself. I smiled happily as Ewitt's action bespoke a character more in keeping with his imposing physique than that betrayed when he had vulgarly spoken of pulling a girl's leg. That had been like seeing a beautiful house occupied by nothing but poachers, and I loved humanity, so that it always hurt to see even the meanest individual do less than their best. Well, cheer up, I said. Take care not to similarly transgress again. We are all constantly committing regrettable actions, but so long as we are careful not to repeat them we may hope to make some headway. So the knight received a favourable reply, and the man supplanted by him went another way. Mrs. Martha Clay proved a little obstreperous in regard to Ernest Bresslaw filling the position of grandson-in-law. You always get what you don't want, said she. And that's why one of the same classes treated me daughter so shocking is to be pestering me from a grandchild in the same way. A girl of the decent class wants to look a long time before she leaps with one of them swells. They just take to a girl out of their own clique, out of the contrariness of human nature, and then, by and by, give them a dog's life. I know there's bad in all classes, but them upstarts have so much more license to be up to bad capers. That's where it comes in. And anyhow I ain't breakin' me neck to have dawn married, none of my people ever had any trouble to get married, and she can wait a bit and look around and see if this fellow can stand the test of waitin'—concluded the old dame with a light of conflict in her steel-blue eye. Fortunately I was able to bring forward a seductive statement of the case. Walker, the man who had made the money of for Breslau and his step-brother, had been a grand level-headed old labourer, and though his sons had been educated in the great English schools, they were not far removed from honest utilitarian folk, and owing to this, and in conjunction with Dawn, when her real name was divulged, being a daughter of one of the old families, to wit, the mood-hips of Minangle, the old dame consented to be reconciled. Now that the oppression of Carrie had been removed, Mrs. Bray came over and beamed upon us in her usual, inspiring way. The electioneering gossip having died out, she reopened the old budget concerning the misdoings of the Manoon aristocracy, and once more the name of Mrs. Tinker figured so largely on the bill that I deeply regretted my inability to encounter this much discussed into a duel. However, when Dawn flung into the quiet pool, the bomb of her approaching wedding, with one of the best catchers of New South Wales, all other topics vaded into insignificance, and every woman who had the slightest acquaintance with the bride-elect called on her to warn her against the horrors to be discovered, after she had irrevocably taken the contemplated step in the dark. As Dawn was going to take it speedily, they were very enthusiastic and unanimous in their evidence against the married state under present conditions, and the thoughtful student of life, on listening to the testimony of these women of the respectable, useful class, supposed to be comfortably and happily married, will know that notwithstanding the great epoch of female enfranchisement, the workers for the cause of women have yet no time for rest. Dawn was so visibly worried by the revelations made to her in the most natural way that Grandma grew concerned and published her mind on the subject. Women ought to hold their tongues and let young girls come to things gradual. To have it thrust upon them, sudden, is too much of an eye-opener for them. The way women tell how their husbands treat them nowadays is surprising. We all know that with the best of men, marriage ain't a path of roses, but in my day women kept it to themselves. They suffered it in silence and thought it was the right thing, but they're getting too much sense now, and perhaps all this crying out against it will be a means to an end, for a grievance can't be remedied till it's aired. And that's for certain, said she. Mrs. Bray was in great form during those days, and though her assertions frequently lacked logic and betrayed in her the very shortcomings which she railed against in men, nevertheless I liked her, for she blurted out that with which the little quiet woman rules by keeping it in the background, well hidden under seeming humility. Look here, Dolan, said she, on one of these occasions. When you get a home of your own, take my advice and don't ever let no other woman in it. You can't see in what men are. There's no trust in none of them. And if you think you can, you'll find yourself solved, and try as soon as ever you're married to get something into your own hands, as a married woman is helpless to earn her living. And once you have any children, you're right at the mercy of a man. And if he ain't pleased with you in every way, you're in a pretty fix, because the law upholds men in every way. If you don't feel inclined to be their abject slave, they can even take your children from you, and what do you think of that? It shows we ain't got the vote none too soon, I reckon. I'm not saying that you'll get that kind of crawler. Some of them is good. A jolly side better than some of the women. But the most, when you come to live with them, is as hard as nails. They don't know how to be nothing else. They never know what it is to be quite helpless and dependent. So what do they care? They're just glory and triumph over women being under them, because they know there's nothing to bring them down, and you want to set your wits to get some hold on a man. He has plenty on you by law, and everything else. Get some property, or something in your name, so that he can't make a dishcloth of you all together. Being rich will have a somewhat easier time, but it's when you've got mountains of work, when you ain't feeling as strong as sand owl for it, and have one child at your skirts, and another in your arms, and your husband to think women ain't intended for nothing better, that this is God's design from, like most men do, it's then that married life ain't the heaven some young girls think it's going to be. This ain't a description of no uncommon case, but among them all around you, and supposed to be the fortunate ones. I think girls want warning, so they ain't going into it with their eyes shut. The picture painted by this lady was duplicated by sadder pictures of the small worn type, and some weeks of this brought us to advance to spring and a bride to be so worried and unhappy that she had lost her appetite and the roses from her cheeks, and grew visibly thinner. Ernest, who managed to snatch a little time from worshipping his bride-elect, wearing to super intend for furnishing of his house, was exceedingly sensitive that his affianced should look so perceptibly miserable. Do you think she doesn't care for me and would like to be released? I'd rather die than marry her if she doesn't want me, he would say, sometimes with haughtiness, and more often with anger. Good gracious, I don't know why she thinks I'm going to belong to the criminal class. Goodness knows if I were to judge her the same way, there are plenty of wives who would scare even a hotentock from matrimony, and if I were to express to dawn any fears of her being similar, I bet you'd hear of our engagement coming to a sudden death. You seem to understand her better than I do, so say a good word for me if you can. My opinion of him being so high, saying a word in his favour gave me delight, and I took the first opportunity of saying a good many. At the end of one day, after dawn had been subjected to a particularly gruesome account of what you might expect, I found her face downwards on her bed, weeping bitterly and illicit. I'm going to tell Ernest tomorrow that I won't marry him. It's too terrible. They all tell you the same. I'd rather end my living in some other way while I'm able. I'd rather throw up the thing now, when most of my true soul is ready, than go on if one quarter of what they say is true. I'm not one of those fools who think life is going to turn out something special for me. Before these women were married, I suppose they thought their husbands were going to be kings, but seeing how they have panned out, and why should I expect any better? Time had arrived to take the subject in both hands, so I gripped it firmly. You must be thankful to gain one point at a time, I said, beginning with the lightest end of my argument. A little while since you feared you were fated for the life of those around household drudgery, with an occasional sulky drive in the afternoon. Now that you have escaped that prospect, you are haunted by worst possibilities. No doubt you hear some saddening and deplorable stories, for some of the laws relating to marriage are degrading, and a lot of the married woman in the working class, where she is wife, mother, cook, launderess, needlewoman, charwoman, and often many other things combined, is the most heart-breakingly cruel and tortured slavery. But you are escaping the probability of such a purgatorial existence. Take comfort in knowing that a great percentage of men are infinitely superior to the laws under which they live, because law is determined by public opinion, and though it restrains and modifies public behaviour it will not mould private character. Law is shaped for the masses, but there is a small percentage of individuals in either sex who are superior to any workable law, and I think Ernest Breslauer is one of these. Do you, she said, sitting up eagerly, would you marry him without any fear if you were me? I would, right at once, in spite of all its shortcomings I have a profound belief that not woman as the poet has it, but all humanity holds something sacred, something undefiled, some quenchless gleam of the celestial light. The rain that was temporarily washing the perfume from the flowers padded against the window-panes and accentuated the silence, till I added, I will tell you my history some day, so that you may see that when I have belief in my fellows how little reason you have to fear, I have been an actress, you know. Yes, Ernest told me. Well, I'll tell you about it one day. I did not mention that I had expressly requested Ernest to keep my past a secret, however, I was not displeased that he had been unable to do so. If a man of his inexperience, and in the zenith of his first overwhelming passion, had been able to keep such a secret in the teeth of his loves-weedling, he would have proved himself of the stuff to make an ambassadorial diplomat, but not of the calibre to be the affectionate, domesticated husband, having no interests of which his wife might not be cognisant, the only character to whom I could, without misgiving, entrust the hot-headed dawn. I had been pegged out with an attack that fell to my lot a little time after the election. The doctors smally considered it advisable to summon Dr. Tinker to a consultation, but sad to say I was too comatose to have become acquainted with the husband of the famous Mrs. Tinker, whose individuality afforded considerable interest, because it was very conspicuous when surrounded by the neutrality of life in Nunun. However, with the aid of some paltices, constructed by Grandma Clay, and energetically applied by Mrs. Bray, and because my hour had not yet come, against the time when we slid into a splendid October, I was tottering about once more. During my time of confinement, the old valley had put on its finishing touches of spring glory. Only a few golden oranges now remained on the trees, and amid the bright green leaves with thick clusters of waxy bloom. The perfume from them was heavenly, and sometimes almost too powerful after the sun had toppled behind the great level-browed range which, viewed from the plain, guarded the west of the valley of Nunun like a mighty wall. Some of the land had been cultivated for a century without attention to artificial renewal of its fertility, but still it gave forth a wondrous variety in wealth of vegetation. The wide-spreading cedars hung out their scented bloom like heliotrop flags amidst the surrounding greenery of pine, plain, poplar, and locot, and the peach and apricot orchards contributed banks of their delicate flowers, which in the glory of their massed bloom could have out Japan Japan. Along the lanes where their stones had been thrown, they sprang up and bloomed and bore liberally. Roses of many kinds and colours clambered up veranda posts and peeped over fences. The garden plots were like compressed bouquets. The brilliant, graceful, and exquisitely perfumed pink oleanders grew wild in the fields, and altogether the veil of melons had graduated to a valley of flowers. The days had stretched out so that the mail from the far west truneled down the mountains in time to cross the queer old bridge across the Nunun at daybreak, and the first beams of morning turned its windows to gold as the waking flowers were lifting their dew-drenched heads, and the soft white mists were dispersing themselves, betimes from the plains, dotted with ramshackle little homes, and cut into squares by barbed wire fences. The weather had warmed so that the fashionable's weekend exit to the cool blue mountains had begun, and the youngsters near the railway line sometimes left their play and stood a gape in the soft twilight to watch the governor's car painted in a strikingly different colour to all the others, and emblazoned with the British coat of arms go by. Uncle Jake, a hired man, and Andrew were very busy on the farm, and we nonetheless engaged in the house, where every article of furniture was made a receptacle for drapery and haberdashery, and where the wedding was the only subject. It so often gave Andrew the pip that his constitution must have been seriously impaired by such frequent attacks of this complaint. In those days, Dawn was too engrossed to take me for drives, and Ernest too occupied to pull me on the historic stretch of water running like the moats of old beside his lady's castle, so that Ada Grovner, in her office of doing good to all with whom she came in contact, stepped into the breach and sought to aid my recovery by taking me for gentle exercise. It was one day when we had driven east from noon that she remarked, It's a wonder that Mr Bressler would care for Dawn's style when he moves in such a smart set. She is a handsome girl, which covers a multitude of sin in that respect, but still she is very downright and, and well, doesn't quite conform to the rules of refinement. I only smiled and waited till the pony's head was turned for home, when I covered the necessity for reply by admiring the incomparable panorama before us. From the altitude we had reached on the Sydney Road, we could see above the unbroken line of the horizon west from Nanoon Town, and the blue Australian mountains stretched across the view in an endless succession of round-topped peaks, painted in their matchless cerulean tints, which near the end of the day were royal in this blender. For a hundred miles they reigned supreme before the fringe of the endless plains was reached. Peak after peak, gorge on gorge, tear upon tear of beatling walls of rock, disclosing dim shadowy gullies, clothes with greenery and ferns, were abounded cascades of water and dewy springs in romantic and unrivaled solitude. The sun, surrounded by a gorgeous pageant of flame and gold, rested his chin on one of the peaks, as though well pleased with the glowing, snowless scene that his officers had in part created, and lingered a moment, air giving it up to the eager night. She sent her forerunners, Twilight, which paled the wondrous blues, and Dusk that left the mountains shadowy and indistinct, when the Lady of Darkness herself rubbed them right out of that great canvas, and left it no-coloured beauty, but the gleam of the fast stars overhead, and the tiny man-made lights below, which showing from the windows of the little homesteads creeping up the mountain sides, twinkled like points between earth and sky. Ms. Grovner made no further comment regarding Dawn's probable inability to rise to the demands of smart society. Only an experience had caused her to make any. Ernest fluttered in the smart set. He and I were familiar with it. Ms. Grovner was not. Therefore we were disillusioned, and she was not. We knew that the acme of refinement and culture might possibly be found in the smart set, but that it was a very small island, surrounded by a very large sea of other styles, which spoke nothing so much as squandered opportunities. We knew girls too superior to dress themselves without a maid, yet who rolled tipsy to bed after every champagne orgy. Supercilious and much-paragraphed misses educated in England, finished in Paris, and presented at court, but who used more slang than grooms, while an expensive education did not raise their brothers above ribaldry and other vulgar excesses. Ernest and I knew a beautiful, honest, intelligent girl when we had the good fortune to meet her, and had no fears that she could not hold her own in good sets, let alone in the smarter ones of colonial or any other fashionable society, where the majority were animated by nothing higher than an insane and inane pursuit of something to kill time. Besides, it was wonderful how Dawn suddenly eschewed slang and conspicuous violation of syntax as she could easily do, for she had been somewhat educated in a school patronised by the Australian Vermont. Had not her grandma told me of the magnitude of her education when I had first arrived, and did she not constantly repeat the story now? For having survived the fear of Ernest being too aristocratic, she took pride in his worldly possessions and position, and characterised him as, more likely than most, if he only turns out true to name, which in the case of husbands is as rare as bought seed potatoes to earn out what they're supposed to be, but there ain't any good of meeting troubles halfway. As the wedding preparations made so much bother, grandma got in a woman to clean, and another to sow, and determined to admit no summer borders until after Christmas. I can do without him, only I like to see money change in hands quicker than happens with a farm, said she, while also in consideration of the wedding, the doors whose opening and shutting had been obstructed by the ravages of the white ants were at last satisfactorily repaired. Dawn, after the manner of most youthful brides, was desirous of the full torture of keeping up her wedding, while Ernest, as usual with white grooms, so shrunk from display that he would have paid half a year's income to escape it, but it was only to me that he made this confession. To Dawn he was manfully unselfish, allowing her full reign and agreeably falling in with her requirements. I did not think much of fussy weddings, but these were such a splendid pair of young things that I was pleased to endure the preparations with a smile instead of a sigh, and contribute some old silks and laces towards the true sow, while a few dainty and expensive trifles sent to me from a traveller over the sea found a place in the furnishing of the bride's boudoir. Like all strictly reared girls, a certain prodiginess at first caused Dawn to shrink from her love as something that should be resisted, but as her wedding day drew near, her heart grew more at peace regarding her contemplated change of life and unfolded to the enchanting influence of the youth's master passion. The rosy eight mists it weaves before the vision of its happy and willing victims blunted even this girl's exceptional and matter-of-fact perspicacity, and with her ears grown suddenly deaf to those who had at first alarmed her by the recapitulation of their unfortunate practical and disillusioning experiences looked out towards a future beautified with as many shades of blue as the mountain ramparts beyond the river flowing by her door. There was no hitch to speak of. Grandma, being one of a bygone brigade, enforced the almost obsolete rule of a chaperone, and the two evils in this case being represented by Andrew and me, Dawn considered me the lesser, and installed me in the office, known by the irreverent, as goose-burying. Mostly it is a thankless and objectionable undertaking, but in this instance it was delightful, and we three spent a kind of anti-nuptial honeymoon that was an experience to be appreciated with a warm glow by one whom the world has all gone by. I suddenly developed a latent artistic ambition, and no subject would do for my brush but the exquisite scenes far up the quiet river where its deep clear pools lay like basins under the overhanging cliffs, and numerous species of beautiful flowering creepers clambered over the cool brown rocks shaded by the turpentine and gum trees, tea tree, wild cotton bush, native hibiscus, and an endless variety of trees and shrubs getting a foothold in the crevices. These nooks, owing to the rugged and precipitous country, could only be reached by water, so Ernest rode me up by boat and Dawn went with me for company, and thus do we live the best of our lives under pretense of trivial outside actions. The river was dotted with other boaters on these summer afternoons, and Grandma Clay's best boats on the river were seldom idle, while Uncle Jack was also occupied in collecting the tariff from those who hired them, and in seeing that the boats themselves were safely moored again after their jaunts. I fear that I may have been a better chaperone from Dawn's point of view than from Grandma's, but even chaperones however great their diplomacy cannot well serve two mistresses. While I sketched, the young couple made horticultural expeditions up the riverbanks, where the cliffs were not too precipitous, and though they went beyond my sight and hearing, and after a couple of hours' absence returned with no better specimens of ferns and flowers than were to be plucked within a stone straw of the boat, I failed to remark it. They were equally lenient in the matter of my feeble sketches, which never progressed beyond a certain stage, and which could have been equally well perpetrated at home from memory, for all the justice they did to the exquisite little gems of the picturesque river scenery. Grandma Clay however thought them fine, and as the demand for them was not likely to be greater than the supply, I generously presented her with one, unfinished and although it was, and which she hung on the line with Jim Clay, and no doubt it was not so great a caricature of the beauty of the noon as the enlargements were of the comeliness of their dead original, in the days when he had told his life's sweetest story to the dashing damsel who could handle her coaching team of five, with as much complacence as her granddaughter, drove her small fat pony in the little yellow sulky about the excrubly rough but level roads of noon municipality. This month the real orange blossoms was a time of moonlight, and regardless of the fact that the river scenes were at their best for reproduction on canvas, when the sun was high enough above the gorges to send great quivering shafts of sunlight between the tree trunks, deep into the heart of the pools, and to cast the shadow of the gum leaves in lace-like patterns on their surface, we sometimes delayed our setting out till close upon sundown, and took a billy in provisions, intent upon having our tea on the rocks under the trees by Noonoon's banks. Ah glorious summer hours on the happy Noonoon, a midstream bright in the hot afternoon sun, cool by the edges where the lilies and reeds abounded, and the beatling cliffs and the limitless eucalypti flung their shade. There was a joy in going abroad when the sun was nearly on the blue wall of mountain, and its oblique beams poured a golden mist over the blossoming orange-eries, the milk-white spirey in clay's drive, and intensified the gorgeous red of the regal pomegranate blooms showing against the heliotrope on the lower limbs of the umbrage's cedars. Coming down the little pathway gained by the creaking garden gate, we shot out from among the drooping willows, the steer's woman turning her face upstream, where in a southerly direction, the ranges were cut in a great V-shaped rift that let the waters through. Anxious to escape from the company and critical observation of the garden species of the local boater, we went a long way upstream. Seven or eight miles were but a bagatelle to the amateur sculling champion of the state that held the world's championship, and he pulled his freight past the evidence of husbandmen, past the straight historic stretch where the Canadian champion had lost his laurels to New South Wales. On, on, the strong arms took the craft, till a wall of mountain loomed straight across our way, and the river had every appearance of coming to a sudden end. But round a sudden surprising elbow we went, till a similar prospect confronted the navigator, and the river came round another of its many angles. On, on we steered, till a warm rich scent from the flowering vineyards was left behind, and the sound of the trains could not be heard. Far up the ravines beyond the pasture lands and men's habitations we found the desired privacy, and the solitude was broken only by the dip of the oars, the flash of an occasional waterfowl, the cry of some night bird, or the plopping of the fishes that Andrew could never catch as they fell back after rising to snatch some unwary insect. The gentle breezes sighing down the gullies, dim and lone in the eerie moonlight, were laden with the scent of wattle and other native flowers, and otherwise fresh and sweet with the inexpressible purity of summer night on the great unbroken bushland. In such dried like resorts we were tempted to dawdle so long that the big hours of the evening frequently found us still on the breast of the river. I was want to recline on an impromptu couch of rugs in the bottom of the well-built craft identified with our excursions, where I could feign to be asleep. At first, dawn suspected me of only pretending, but I was so emphatic in declaring that the fresh air and motion of the boat induced the sleep I could not woo in bed, that they grew to believe me, and carefully covering me from mosquitoes it became invariable that at a certain distance on our homeward way the rower relinquished rowing, the stirrer stopped steering, and the boat drifted downstream with the gentle flow, while two-thirds of its occupants tasted of the elixir, that burns beneath the beauty of the rows and in the hearts of youth and maiden glows, and fills and thrills the world with life and light, and is the soul of all that breeds and grows. And what did the old moon see in that peaceful valley ere she sank behind the great primeval gum-tree forests on the mountain crests, across which zigzag the noisy trains? There were heavy crops above ground, vineyards of bloom, orchids forming fruit, hundreds of comfortable homes, and no doubt many pairs of lovers abroad, for lovers loved their friend the gentle moon. But none were more fitted for love's consummation than the two drifting on the old river, whose limpid waters never again shall blacken below spear and the shadow of spear, bow and the shadow of bow. And which, after rushing a torturous way between its wild gorges, steadies by the old settlement on the plain, and saunters smooth and straight and deep, a space between fertile banks, gardened with lucerne fields, orchids of peach and apricot, and delightful orange groves. The air was intoxicatingly heavy with the exquisite perfume of these bridal blooms, and the soft scented breezes laughed, as they too kissed the close pressed lips of the fair young pair, who gathered up the blossom that rebloomed and drank the magic cup that filled itself anew. Ah, love's idyllic hours on the breast of a grandly gliding river, when the dew's were on the flowers, and all was enchantingly sweet and fair under the sleep-time silver of a southern summer moon. End of chapter 28