Chapter M: F (3)

"No, an' they'll never change, seein' a man is a man an' a girl a girl, no matter what fashions come an' go. I never can see why they make such a fuss and get so frightened because wimmen does a thing or two now they usedn't to. Nothing short of a earthquake can make them not men an' wimmen, an' that's the main thing. Well, to go back to me yarn, lots of other passengers got took the same way, an' there was great bidding for the box seat: that was a perquisite belongin' to the driver, an' me father used to get a sovereign for it often. I used to dispose of it by a sort of tender, an' £5 was nothink for it; an' once in the gold-rush times, w'en money was laying around like water, a big miner, just to show off, gave me two tenners for it. They used to be wantin' to drive, but I took me father's advice an' never let go the reins. Well, among all these fine chaps Jim Clay wasn't noticed. He was always a terrible quiet feller. _I_ did all the jorin'. He'd always say, 'Come now, Martha, there's reason in everythink,' just w'en I'd be mad because I couldn't see no reason in nothink. He was sittin' in the back of the coach, an' it was one wet night, an' only a few passengers for a wonder, who was glad to take refuge inside. Only the lawyer feller was out on the box with me, an' makin' love heavier than it was rainin'. I staved him off all I could, an' with him an' the horses me hands was full. You never see the like of the roads in them days. It was only in later years the Sydney road, I was remarkin', was made good. In them times there was no made roads, and you can imagine the bogs! Why, sometimes you'd think the whole coach was going out of sight in 'em, and chargin' round the stumps up to the axle was considered nothink. We had more pluck in them days! Well, that night the roads was that slippery the brake gave me all I could do, an' a new horse in the back had no more notion of hangin' in the breechin' than a cow; so I took no notice to the lawyer, only told him to hold his mag once or twice an' not be such a blitherer, but it was no use, he took a mean advantage off of me. You can imagine it was easy w'en I had five horses in a coach goin' round slippery sidlin's pitch dark an' rainin'. He put his arms 'round me waist an' that raised me blood, an' I tell you things hummed a little. You'll see Dawn in a tantrum one of these days, but she ain't a patch on me w'en me dander was up in me young days." Looking at the fine old flashing eyes and the steel in her still, it was easy to see the truth of this.

"I jored him to take his hands off me or I'd pull up the coach an' call the inside passengers out to knock him off. He gamed me to do it, an' laughed an' squeezed me harder, an' the cowardly crawler actually made to kiss me; but I bit him on the nose and spat at him, an took the horses over a bad gutter round a fallen tree at the same time--an' some people is afraid to let their blessed daughters out in a doll's sulky with a tiddy little pony no bigger than a dog. If I had children like that I'd give 'em all the chances goin' of breaking their neck, as they wouldn't be worth savin' for anythink but sausage meat. Well, this cur still kep' on at his larks, so soon as I got the team on the level,--it was at Sapling Sidin', runnin' into Ti-tree creek; I could hear the creek gurgling above the sound of the rain, and the white froth on the water I can see it plain now,--I pulled sudden and said 'Woa!' an' it was beautiful the way they'd stop dead. The passengers all suspected there must be a accident, or the bushrangers must have bailed us up, for they was around in full blast in them days. Well, w'en I pulled up I got nervous an' ashamed, an' bust out crying, an' the passengers didn't know what to make of it; but Jim Clay, it appears, had his eye an' ear cocked all the time, an' before any one knew what had happened he had the lawyer feller welted off of the coach an' was goin' into him right an' left. That's what give me a feelin' to Jim Clay all of a sudden, like I never had to no one else before or since. He was always such a terrible quiet feller that no one seemed to notice, an' he'd never made love to me before, but he got besides hisself then and shouts, 'If ever you touch my girl again I'll hammer you to smithereens.' Then he got back on the box an' wiped me eyes on his handkerchief an' protected me. The men inside--mostly diggers makin' through to Victoria--w'en they got the hang of things bust out roarin' an' cheerin', an' said, 'Leave the dawg on the road an' giv him a stummick ache.' He tried to get up, but they pushed him off. He made great threats about the law, but miners is the gamest men alive an' loves fair play. It ain't any use in talking law to them if it ain't fair play, an' they give him to understand if he said anythink to me about it, or told any one an' didn't take his lickin' like a man, they'd break every bone in his body, an' they meant it too. Then they lerruped up the team and left him in the rain an' pitch dark miles from anywhere. That was the only time I give up the reins. I couldn't see for tears, so Jim drove; an' the men took me inside so he could attend to his work, they said, an' they cheered an' joked an' asked w'en the weddin' was comin' off, an' said they'd all come an' give us a rattlin' spree if we'd let 'em know. I didn't know what come over me; I never was much for whimperin', but I cried an' cried as if me heart was broke; an' it wasn't, because every time I thought of the way Jim Clay stuck up for me it give me the best feelin' I ever knew, an' the men was all on my side, an' there was no harm done, an' I ought to have been smilin', but I could do nothink but sob, an' I always think now w'en I see girls cryin' on similar occasions to let 'em alone. Girls can't tell what's up with them, and a cry is good, because they ain't got the outlets that men has w'en they're worked up. We came to the end stage, an' w'en we got off the men all shook hands, an' one or two kissed me, an' pulled me curls, an' slapped Jim Clay on the back, an' called him my sweetheart. W'en we delivered the mail Jim drove me to where I stayed, an' it was terrible embarrassin' w'en we was left alone with no extra people to take the down off of the affair. Jim was painful shy, but he faced it manful; an' he said it didn't matter what they said about us bein' lovers, if it was disagreeable to me he'd never mention it nor think nothink about it, an' it would be forgot in a day or two, as he was a feller of no importance. That was the way he put it; he never was for puttin' hisself up half enough. So crying again I just snuggled up to him an' said I didn't want to forget it, I wanted to remember it more an' more, an' with that he took the hint an' kissed me; an' that's how we got engaged without no proposing or nothink. I didn't tell me mother, or there would have been a uproar, an' just then Jim Clay got a coach on the Cooma line, an' went right away. I told him I'd wait for him. He was away two years, an' w'en he came home we found it was still the same with us. I was eighteen then, an' him twenty-two.

He went away to Queensland for two years more, an' in that time the sister next me was married, an' Jake there was comin' on; but he was never no good on the box--he pottered round and grew forage. Me mother began to suggest I ought to marry this one an' that one, but I waited for Jim Clay, an' w'en I was gettin' on for twenty-one, old Jack Clay reckoned he was gettin' too old for drivin' in all weathers, an' Jim come home an' took his place. A fine great feller he was, all tanned and brown, with his white teeth showin' among his black beard. He said he'd seen no girl that wasn't as tame as ditch water after me, an' as for me, no one else could ever give me the feelin' he could, so we reckoned to be publicly engaged. It raised the most terrible bobberie, and me mother nearly took a fit. She had me laid out for a swell like me sisters, an' she said I must be mad to throw myself away like that. Me brother-in-laws got ashamed of their wives' parents bein' in such a trade, an' as they had made a comfortable bit, they was goin' to give it best and rare a few sheep an' cattle, an' me sisters came down on me an' said I would disgrace them now they had rose theirselves up in the stirrups. Mother said she'd never give her consent, an' I told her very saucy I'd do without it. That's why I know it don't do to press Dawn over far; she must have the same fight in her, an' if drove in a corner there'd be no doing anythink with her. Things was very strained at home then; they thought to wean me of him, an' Jim Clay he hung back some, sayin' I'd better think twice before I threw myself away on him. That made me all the determinder. Jim was the only man for me. I never did have patience with them as can't make up their mind. So I waited, an' the day I was twenty-one--me two sisters was twins and married, one at nineteen and the other at eighteen--I gathered up a few things, and I had two hundred in the bank, and I went to a point of the road, Fern-tree Gully it was named, an' w'en Jim come down the hill with his horses I waved--we had it all made up--an' he stopped till I clambered aboard, an' the box seat was reserved for me that day for nothink, and at the end of the stage we was married. I stayed with Jim's mother for a week or two till we seen a opening, an' I kep' a accommodation while Jim drove a coach. Jim was always steady, an' we was both very popular, though I never pandered to no one, or put up with nothink that didn't please me. Our story was a sort of romance in them days, an' money was changin' hands freely, an' we was all right. The old folk died by-and-by; they didn't live very long, and Jake there come to me. He wasn't good enough for his sisters, an' somehow that's made us always cling together. I ain't blind, I can see he's no miracle; he has his faults. Who hasn't?" the old lady fiercely demanded. I assured her I knew none, and somewhat appeased by this she proceeded.

"Well, as I say, Jake there ain't a wonder of smartness, but he's the only one belonging to the old days left to me, an' you couldn't understand what that means till you get to be my age. If I went to any one of your age, or old enough to be your mother, an' said, 'Do you remember this or that,' how far back could they go with me, do you think?"

"And then did you and Jim Clay--"

"Me an' Jim Clay was the happiest pair I think ever lived under a weddin' ring, an' it was a love match. He was quiet an' easy-goin' like, an' I was the one to bustle, consequently there would be times w'en there would be a little controversy in the house; but Jim, he'd always put his arm round me an' kiss me, an' that's the sort of thing a woman likes. She doesn't like all the love-makin' to be over in the courtin' days, as if it was only a bit of fishin' to ketch her. Tho' of course I'd tell him to leave me alone, that I couldn't bear him maulin' me; but women has to be that way, it bein' rared into them to pretend they don't like what they do. An' you see Jim always remembered how I had stuck to him straight, an' flung up swell matches for him, which must have showed I loved him. That's what gets over a man, he never forgets that in a girl, an' always thinks more of her than the one with prawperty who marries a poor girl and is always suspicioning she took him for what he has. Of course, there are some crawlers of men ain't to be pleased anyhow, but they can be left out of it. In givin' advice to young wives, I always tell 'em w'en they get sick of their husbands, which they all do at times, especially at the start before you get seasoned to endure them, never to let him suspect it, for men, in spite of all their wonderful smartness, has a lot of the child in 'em after all, an' can take a terrible lot of love. (When it comes to givin' any in return, of course that's a horse of another colour.) But of course this is only dealin' with a man that's worth anythink; as I said, there are some crawlers you could make a door-mat of yourself for, an' they'd dance on you an' think nothink of it; but as I said before, there must be reason in everythink to begin with. After Jim died I didn't care for livin' in the old place, an' thought I'd like to get somewhere near the city. Old people ought to have sense. They don't want to crawl round like Methuselah at forty, but they know w'en they git up to seventy they ain't goin' to live for ever, nor get any suppler in the joints, an' ought to make some provision to get nearer churches an' doctors an' all that's necessary to old people; so I sold out an' bought this place down here."

"What family have you?"

"Only Dawn's mother and Andrew's, and two sons away in America. I was misfortunate with me daughters; they both died young, one as I told you, an' the other of typhoid; and so after bein' done with me own family I started with others. I used to think once I'd be content to live till I see me little ones grown up an' settled, an' then I wanted to live till I see Dawn able to take care of herself, an' now I suppose, if I didn't take care, I'd want to be waitin' to see Dawn's children around me. That's the way; w'en we get along one step we want to go another, an' it's good some matters ain't left for us to decide. But it's all for Dawn and Andrew I bother now, only for them me work would be done; but it's good to have them, they keep me from feelin' like a old wore-out dress just hangin' up waitin' to be eat by the moths."

"Grandma!" said the voice of Dawn in the doorway, "I can't get this beastly old stove to draw, and I'm blest if I can cook the dinner. I never saw such a place, one has to work under such terrible difficulties. It's something fearful." Her voice was cross, and her facial expression bore further testimony to a state of extreme irritation.

Grandma rose to combat, she never meekly sat down under any circumstances, great or small.

"Terrible place, indeed; see if _you_ had to provide a home what you'd have in it. You was never done squarkin' for that stove; some one else had one like it, an' you was goin' to do strokes w'en you got it. It's always easy to complain about things w'en you are not the one responsible!"

Grandma and I decided to go to the kitchen and prescribe for the stove.

From an idle onlooker's point of view it seemed an excellent domestic implement in good health; but the beautiful cook averred it would produce no heat.

"It must be like Bray's," said grandma, "they thought it was no good, and it was only because of some damper that had to be fixed."

"Yes; and they had a man there to fix it for them; that's the terrible want about this place, there being no _man_ about it to do anything," Dawn said pointedly, looking at Uncle Jake, who was calmly sitting in his big chair in the corner. He was not disconcerted. A man who could live for years on a widowed sister without making himself worth his salt is not of the calibre to be upset by a few hints.

"I've busted up me pants again," cheerfully announced Andrew from the doorway--misfortunes never come singly. "Dawn, just get a needle and cotton and stitch 'em together."

"I never knew you when they weren't 'busted up,' and you can get another pair or hold a towel round you till Carry comes home; she's got to do the mending, it's her week in the house. I've got enough to worry me, goodness knows!"

"Dear me!" said grandma, walking away as I once more volunteered to be a friend in need to Andrew, "w'en people is young, an' a little thing goes wrong, they think they have the troubles of a empire upon them, but the real troubles of life teaches 'em different. You are a good-for-nothink lump anyhow, Andrew. Where have you been on a Sunday morning tearing round the country?"

Andrew threw no light on the question, and his grandma repeated it.

"Where have you been, I say--answer me at once?"

"Oh, where haven't I been!" returned Andrew a trifle roughly, "I couldn't be tellin' you where I've been. A feller might as well be in a bloomin' glass case as carry a pocket-book around an' make a map of where he's been."

The old lady's eyes flashed.

"None of yer cheek to me, young man! You're getting too big for yer boots since you left school. If in five minutes you don't tell me where you've been an' who you was with, I'll screw the neck off of you. Nice thing while you're a child an' looking to me for everythink that goes into your stummick an' is put on your back, an' I'm responsible for you, that you can't answer me civil. Your actions can't bear lookin' into, it seems. I'll go over an' see Mr Bray about it this afternoon if you don't tell me at once."

"I ain't been anywhere, only pokin' up an' down the lanes with Jack Bray."

"Well, why couldn't you say so at once without raisin' this rumpus. Them as has rared any boys don't know what it is to die of idleness an' want of vexation."

"It wasn't _me_ rose the rumpus. Some people always blames others for what they do themselves: it 'u'd give a bloke th' pip," grumbled Andrew, as I put the last stitch in his trousers and his grandma departed. Her black Sunday dress rustled aggressively, and her plain bibless holland apron, which she never took off except when her bonnet went on for street appearance or when she went to bed, and her little Quaker collars and cuffs of muslin edged with lace, were even more immaculate than on week-days. She scorned a cap, and her features were so well cut that she looked well with the grey hair--wonderfully plentiful and wavy for one of her years,--simply parted and tidily coiled at the back. This costume or toilet, always fresh and never shabby, was invariably completed by a style of light house-boots, introduced to me as "lastings"; and there was an unimpaired vigour of intellect in their wearer good to contemplate in a woman of the people aged seventy-five.

It came on to rain after dinner and confined us all to the house.

Dawn borrowed an exciting love-story from Miss Flipp; grandma read a "good" book; Uncle Jake still pored over the 'Noonoon Advertiser,' while Andrew repaired a large amount of fishing-tackle, with which during the time I knew him I never knew him to catch a fish, and Carry grumbled about the rain.

"Poor Carry!" sympathised Andrew, "she can't git out to do a spoon with Larry, an' the poor bloke can't come in--he's so sweet, you know, a drop of rain would melt him."

"It would take something to melt you," retorted Carry. "The only thing I can see good in the rain is that it will keep Mrs Bray away."

And thus passed my first full day at Clay's.

SEVEN.

THE LITTLE TOWN OF NOONOON.

The little town, situated whereaway it does not particularly matter, and whose name is a palindrome, is one of the oldest and most old-fashioned in Australia. Less than three dozen miles per road, and not many more minutes by train from the greatest city in the Southern hemisphere, yet many of its native population are more unpolished in appearance than the bush-whackers from beyond Bourke, the Cooper, and the far Paroo. It is an agricultural region, and this in some measure accounts for the slouching appearance of its people. Men cannot wrest a first-hand living from the soil and at the same time cultivate a Piccadilly club-land style and air.

It is a valley of small holdings, being divided into farms and orchards, varying in size from several to two or three hundred acres. Many grants were apportioned there in the early days. Representatives of the original families in some instances still hold portions of them, and the stationary population has drifted into a tiny world of their own, and for want of new blood have ideas caked down like most of the ground, and evinced in many little characteristics distinct from the general run of the people of the State.

Though they were, when I knew them, possessed of the usual human failings in an average degree, they were for the most part a splendid class of population--honest, industrious producers, who, in Grandma Clay's words, "Keep the world going." There was only a small percentage of idlers and parasites among them, but they did duty with a very small-minded unprogressive set of ideas.

There is a place in New South Wales named Grabben-Gullen, where the best potatoes in the world are grown. Great, solid, flowery beauties, weighing two pounds avoirdupois, are but ordinary specimens in this locality, and the allegorical bush statement for illustrating their uncommon size has it that they grow under the fences and trip the horses as they travel the lanes between the paddocks. Similarly, to explain the wonderful growth of vegetation in the fertile valley of Tumut, its inhabitants assure travellers that pumpkin and melon vines grow so rapidly there that the pumpkins and melons are worn out in being dragged after them.

Now, as I strolled around the lanes of Noonoon, I felt the old slow ways, like Grabben-Gullen potatoes, protruding to stifle one's mental flights; but there was nothing representative of the Tumut pumpkin and melon vines to wear one out in a rush of progress. The land was rich and beautiful and in as genial and salubrious a climate as the heart of the most exacting could desire; but the residents had drifted into unenterprising methods of existence, and progress had stopped dead at the foot of the Great Dividing Range. The great road winding over it bore the mark of the convicts, and other traces of their solid workmanship were to be found in occasional buildings within a radius of twenty miles; but their day had passed as that of the bullock-dray and mail-coach, superseded by the haughty "passenger-mail" and giant two-engined "goods" trains,--while for quicker communication with the city than these afforded, the West depended upon the telegraph wires.

In days gone by the swells had patronised Noonoon as a week-end resort, and some of their homes were now used as boarding-houses,--while their one-time occupants had other tenement, and their successors patronised the cooler altitudes farther up the Blue Mountains, or had followed the governor to Moss Vale.

Once upon a time Noonoon had rushed into an elaborate, unbalanced water scheme, and had lighted itself with electricity. To do this it had been forced to borrow heavily, so that now all the rates went to the usurer, and no means were available for current affairs. The sanitation was condemned, and the streets and roads for miles, as far as the municipality extended, were a disgrace to it.

Exceedingly level, they possessed characteristics of some of the best thoroughfares; but the wheel-ways were formed of round river stones which neither powdered nor set, and to drive along them was cruel to horses, ruinous to vehicles, and as trying on the nerves of travellers as crossing a stony stream-bed. There seemed to be nothing possible in the matter but to abuse the municipal council as numskulls and crawlers, and this was done on every hand with unfailing enthusiasm.

Though so near the metropolis, Noonoon was less in touch with it than many western towns,--in most respects was a veritable great-grandmother for stagnation and bucolic rusticity, and in individuality suggested one of the little quiet eddies near the emptying of a stream, and which, being called into existence by a back-flow, contains no current. But while thus falling to the rear in the ranks of some departments of progress, the little town retained a certain degree of importance as one of the busiest railway centres in the state, and its engine-sheds were the home of many locomotives. Here they were coaled, cleaned, and oiled ere taking their stiff two-engine haul over the mountains to the wide, straight, pastoral and wheat-growing West, and their calling and rumbling made cheery music all the year round, excepting a short space on Sundays; while at night, as they climbed the crests of the mountain-spurs, every time they fired, the red light belching from their engine doors could be seen for miles down the valley. Thus Noonoon's train service was excellent, and a great percentage of the town population consisted of railway employés.

What is the typical Australian girl, is a subject frequently discussed. To find her it is necessary to study those reared in the unbroken bush,--those who are strangers to town life and its influences. City girls are more cosmopolitan. Sydney girls are frequently mistaken for New Yorkers, while Bostonian ladies are as often claimed to be Englishwomen; and it is only the bush-reared girl--at home with horse, gun, and stock-whip, able to bake the family bread, make her own dresses, take her brother's or father's place out of doors in an emergency, while at the same time competent to grace a drawing-room and show herself conversant with the poets--who can rightfully lay claim to be more typically Australia's than any other country's daughter. Of course the city Australians are Australians too. Australia is the land they put down as theirs on the census paper. She is their native land; but ah! their country has never opened her treasure-troves to them as to those with sympathetic and appreciative understanding of her characteristics, and many of them are as hazy as a foreigner as to whether it is the kooka-burra that laughs and the moke-poke that calls, or the other way about. They are incapable of completely enjoying the full heat of noonday summer sun on the plains, and the evening haze stealing across the gullies does not mean all it should. The exquisite rapturous enjoyment of the odour of the endless bush-land when dimly lit by the blazing Southern stars, or the companionship of a sure-footed nag taking the lead round stony sidlings, or the music of his hoof-beats echoing across the ridges as he carries a dear one home at close of day, are all in a magic storehouse which may never be entered by the Goths who attempt to measure this unique and wonderful land by any standard save its own,--a standard made by those whose love of it, engendered by heredity or close companionship, has fired their blood.

These observations lead up to the fact that Noonoon folk boasted their own individuality, smacking somewhat of town and country and yet of neither. Some of the older ones patronised the flowing beards and sartorial styles "all the go way up in Ironbark," yet if put Out-Back would have been as much new chums as city people, and were wont to regard honest unvarnished statements of bush happenings as "snake yarns"; while the youths of these parts combined the appearance of the far bush yokel and the city larrikin, and were to be seen following the plough with cigarettes in their mouths.

The small holdings were cut into smaller paddocks, the style of fence mostly patronised being two or three strands of savage barbed wire stretched from post to post. This insufficient separation of stock was made adequate by the cattle themselves carrying the remainder of the white man's burden of fencing around their necks, in the form of a hampering yoke made of a forked tree-limb with a piece of plain fencing-wire to close the open ends. This prevented them pushing between the wires, and it was a pathetically ludicrous sight to see the calves at a very tender age turned out an exact replica of their elders. All the places opened on to the roads like streets; and to go across country was a sore ordeal, as one had to uncomfortably cross roughly upturned crop-land, and every few hundred yards roll under a line of barbed wire about a foot from the ground, at the risk of reefing one's clothes and the certainty of dishevelment. To walk out on the main roads and stumble over the loose stones ankle-deep in the dust was torture. Some averred they had known no repairs for ten years, and that they were as good as they were, because to have been worse was impossible. Walking in this case being no pleasure, I bethought me of riding for gentle exercise, and inquired of Grandma Clay the possibilities in that respect.

"Ride! there ain't nothink to ride in this district, only great elephant draughts or little tiddy ponies the size of dogs," she said with unlimited scorn; "I never see such crawlers, they go about in them pokin' little sulkies, and even the men can't ride. In my young days if a feller couldn't ride a buck-jumper the girls wouldn't look at him, an' yet down here at one of the shows last year in the prize for the hunters, the horses had to be all rode by one man; there wasn't another young feller in the district fit to take a blessed moke over a fence. I felt like goin' out an' tacklin' it meself, I was that disgusted. I never was a advocate for this _great_ ridin' that racks people's insides out an' cripples them, there ain't a bit of necessity for it, but there is reason in everythink, an' they're goin' to the other extreme, and will have to be carried about on feather-beds in a ambulance soon if they keep on as they are. There's nothink as good as it was in the old days. As for a woman ridin' here, all the town would go out to gape like as she was somethink in the travellin' show business. I used to ride w'en I come down here first,--that was sixteen year ago,--but every one asked me such questions, an' looked at me like a Punch an' Judy show, that I got sick of it. I rode into Trashe's at the store there one day, an' w'en I was comin' out he says, 'Will you have a chair to get on?' an' as he didn't seem to be man enough to sling me on, I said I supposed so. He goes for one of them tallest chairs--it would be as easy to get on the horse as it--an' I sez, 'Thanks, I'm not ridin' a elephant, one of them little chairs would do.' But even that didn't seem to content him; he put it high on the pavement an' put the horse in the gutter. Then, instead of puttin' the reins over the horse's head proper, he left them on the hook, an' with both hands an' all his might holds the beast short by them in front of its jaw, like as it was the wildest bull from the Bogongs. The idiot! Supposin' the beast was flash an' pulled away from him, where would I be without the reins? That about finished me, I was sick of it, as I could not have believed any man, even out of a asylum, could be so simple about puttin' a person on a horse."

For this kind of exercise there seemed no promising outlet, and I was put to it to think of some other. As grandma said, with few exceptions, the only horses in the district were draughts and ponies. Every effect has a cause, and the reason of this was that these big horses were the only ones properly adapted to agriculture, and the smallness of the holdings did not admit of hacks being kept for mere pleasure, so the cheapest knockabout horse to maintain was a pony, as not only did it take less fodder and serve for the little saddle use of this place, but tethered to a sulky, took the wives and children abroad. It was the land of sulkies,--made in all sizes to fit the pony that had to draw them, and of quality in accordance with the purse that paid for them,--and a pair of horses and a buggy was a rare sight.

Andrew suggested that I should go rowing, and glowingly recommended a little two-man craft named the _Alice_, and as I could row well in my young days, I determined to test her capacity by going up stream very gently, as my time was unlimited and my strength painfully the reverse. It was a crisp day towards the end of April, so I was feeling brisker than usual, and the _Alice_ was deserving of her good reputation. The Noonoon was one of the noblest and most beautiful streams in the State, and above the substantial and unique old bridge its deep, calm waters stretched for about two miles as straight as a ribbon, in a reach made historic because it has been the racecourse of some of the greatest sculling matches the world has known. Orange and willow-trees were reflected in the clear depths of the rippleless flow, and lured by its beauty, the responsiveness of my craft, and an unusual cheerfulness, I foolishly overdid my strength. I was thinking of Dawn. Her girlish confidence regarding the desire of her hot young heart had so appealed to me that I was exercised to discover a suitable knight, for this and not a career I felt was the needful element to complete her life and anchor her restless girlish energy. To tell her so, however, would ruin all. Time must be held till the appearance of the hero of the romance I intended to shape. With this end in view I thought of recommending her grandma to let her voice be trained. Two years at the very least would thus be gained, and if properly floated and advertised in the matrimonial field, what may not be accomplished in that time by a beautiful and vivacious girl of eighteen or nineteen? I was recalled from such speculations by finding that it was beyond me to row another stroke, and I was in a fix. A slight wind turned the boat, and she drifted on to a fallen tree a little below the surface, and, though not upsetting, stuck there, and was too much for me to get off.

At that time of the year, except very occasionally, the river was free from boaters and the fishers who told of the fish that used to be got there in other times, so there was nothing to do but wait until my absence caused anxiety, when some one would surely come after me. Not a very alarming plight if one were well, but I felt one of my old cruel attacks was at hand, which was not encouraging. No one was within sight, but in case there should be a ploughman over a rise within hearing, I coo-eed long and well. My voice had been trained. I coo-eed three times, allowing an interval to elapse, and then settled into the bottom of the boat to await developments. Soon I was disturbed by the plunk! plunk! of a swimmer, and saw a young man approaching by strong rapid strokes. It is strange how hard it is to recognise any one when only their face is above water and one meets them in an unexpected place, and though this face seemed familiar there was nothing unusual in that, as I knew so many theatre patrons' faces in a half fashion. My rescuer having ascertained the simple nature of my dilemma, and easily gaining the boat by reason of the log, exclaimed--

"Why, it's never you! What on earth are you doing here?" and I responded--

"Ernest Breslaw! It's never you! What are _you_ doing here? _I'm_ stuck on this log."

"And I've come to get you off it," he laughed.

"Yes, but otherwise? This may be a suitable cove for a damaged hull, but what can a newly-launched cruiser like you be doing here?"

"I'm in training, and was just taking a plunge; it's first-class!" he said enthusiastically, and looking at his splendid muscles, enough to delight the eye of even such a connoisseur in physique as myself, and well displayed by a neat bathing-suit, there was no need to inquire for what he was in training. 'Twas no drivelling pen-and-ink examination such as I could have passed myself, but something needing a Greek statue's strength of thew.

"Are you feeling ill?" he considerately inquired, and as I assured him to the contrary, though I was feeling far from normal, he put me out on the bank while he rowed up stream for his clothes and returned to take me home. Having encased himself in some serviceable tweeds and a blue guernsey, he rolled me in his coat ere beginning to demolish the homeward mile--an infinitesimal bagatelle to such a magnificent pair of arms. I enjoyed the play of the broad shoulders and ruddy cheeks, and did not talk, neither did he. He was an athlete, not a conversationalist, while I was a conversationalist lacking sufficient athletic strength to keep up my reputation just then.

"It was very silly of you to come out alone or attempt to row in your state of health! It might have been your death," he presently remarked in a grandfatherly style. "Where are you putting up?"

"At Clay's."

"I know; the old place with the boats," he replied as the _Alice_ whizzed along.

"I was aching for diversion," I said, in excuse for the rashness of my act.

"Well, I can take you for a pull now. I'll be here for a few weeks. Will you come to-morrow afternoon? Would three o'clock suit you?" he inquired as he moored. "The scenery is magnificent farther up the river."

"Yes, if I'm not here at three o'clock you'll know that I'm not able to come. You are very good, Ernest, to waste time with me."

"I'm only too proud to be able to row you about and expend a little despised brute force in returning all the entertainment with brains in it you have given me in the past."

"Yes, at the cost of anything under 7s. 6d. an evening,--am I to pay you that for rowing me?"

"Put it in the hospital-box," he said with a laugh that displayed his strong white teeth between his firm bold lips. He was altogether a sight that was more than good in my eyes.

I found I was not strong enough to spring ashore, but young Breslaw managed that and my transit up the steep bank to the house with an ease and gentleness so dear to woman's heart, that the strength to accomplish it is the secret of an athlete being in ninety per cent of cases a woman's ideal.

"Oh, I say," as he was leaving me at the gate, "if you mention me, speak of me as R. Ernest, as I've dropped the Breslaw where I'm staying. I don't want wind of my being here to get into the papers. I'm practising in the dark, as I'd like to give some of the cracks a surprise licking."

"Very well, I'm under an alias too, so please don't forget. To all except a few theatre patrons I'm as dead as ditch-water; but some one might recognise the old name, and it would be very unpleasant."

"Right O! To-morrow at three, then, I'll give you a pull," he said, doffing his cap from his heavy ruddy locks, now drying into waves and gleaming a rival hue in the setting sun, as he bounded down the bank and made his way along the river-edge to the bridge, as his place of sojourn was farther up than Clay's and on the other side.

The excitement of thus meeting him had somewhat revived me, for here at once, as though in response to my wish, was a fitting knight to play a leading _rôle_ with my young lady, the desire for whose wellbeing had taken grip of me. For her sweet sake, and the sake of the fragrant manliness of the stalwart and deserving knight, I straightway resolved to enter the thankless and precarious business of matchmaking, one in which I had not had one iota of experience; but as women have to ace marriage, domesticity, and mostly all the issues of life assigned them, without training, I did not give up heart. As a first effort I determined that Dawn should chaperon me when I went for my row on the morrow. As I looked at the sun sinking behind the blue hills and shedding a wonderfully mellow light over the broad valley, I thought of my own life, in which there had been none to pull a heart-easing string, and the bitterness of those to whom that for which they had fought has been won so late as to be Dead Sea fruit, took possession of me.

The doctors had several long and fee-inspiring terms for my malady, but I knew it to be an old-fashioned ailment known as heart-break--the result of disappointment, want of affection, and over-work. The old bitterness gripped the organ of life then; it brought me to my knees. I tried to call out, but it was unavailing. Sharp, fiendish pain, and then oblivion.

EIGHT.

GRANDMA TURNS NURSE.

When I came to it was dark enough for lights, Dawn's well-moulded hands were supporting my head, Grandma Clay's voice was sternly engineering affairs, and Andrew was blubbering at the foot of the bed on which I was resting.

I tried to tell them there was no cause for alarm, and to beg grandma's pardon for turning her house into a "sick hospital," but though not quite unconscious, I appeared entirely so.

"I wish you had sense to have gone for Dr Tinker when Dr Smalley wasn't in," said the old lady, with nothing but solicitude in her voice.

The sternness in evidence when I had been trying to gain entrance to her house was entirely absent.

"I'm afraid she's dead," said Dawn.

"Oh, she ain't; is she, Dawn?" sobbed Andrew. "She was a decent sort of person. A pity some of those other old scotty-boots that was here in the summer didn't die instead." And that cemented a firm friendship between the lad and myself. An individual utterly alone in the world prizes above all things a little real affection.

Presently there was a clearance in the room, effected by the doctor, who, after a short examination, pronounced my malady a complication of heart troubles, gave a few instructions, and further remarked, "Send up for the mixture. She isn't dead, but she may snuff out before morning. She's bound to go at a moment's notice, sometime. Give her plenty of air. If she has any friends she ought to be sent to them if she pulls through this."

Grandma gave the meagre details she knew concerning me, and as the practitioner, whom I took to be a veterinary surgeon called in for the emergency, went out, he said--

"If she dies to-night you can send me word in the morning; that will be soon enough; and if I don't hear from you I'll call again to-morrow."

"She ain't goin' to die if I can stop her," said grandma when he had departed. "I'll bring her to with a powltice. I ain't given to be cumflummixed by what a doctor says; many a one they give up is walking about as strong as bull-beef to-day. I never see them do no good in a serious case. They are right enough to set a bone or sew up a cut, but when you come to think of it, what could be expected of them? They know a little more than us because they've hacked up a few bodies an' know how the pieces fit together, but as for knowin' what's goin' on, they ain't the Almighty, and ain't to be took notice of. The way they know about the body is the same as you and Carry know the kitchen, an' could go in the dark an' feel for anythink while all was well, but if anythink strange was there you couldn't make it out," and setting to work, brewing potions and applying remedies of her own, the practical old lady soon brought me around so that I was able to make my apologies.

"Good Heavens! What do you take us for?" she exclaimed. "It would be a fine kind of a world if we wasn't a little considerate to each other. It does the young people good to learn 'em a little kindness. I couldn't be askin' people like Carry there to wait on people, but it's Dawn's week in the house an' she'll look after you, an' you needn't be wantin' to clear out to the hospital. You won't be no better looked after there than here."

Never was more tactful kindness on shorter acquaintance.

Little Miss Flipp undertook to sit by my bed during the early watches of the night, for they could not be persuaded to leave me alone. Her eyes bore evidence of many more sleepless watches, but the poor little thing did not unburden her heart to me. Dawn appeared to relieve her at 2 A.M., and the engaging child manfully struggled against the sleep that leadened the pretty blue eyes till morning, when grandma, brisk as a cricket, took her turn.

At eleven I was interested by the doctor's entrance. He came on tiptoe, but like a great proportion of male tiptoeing it defeated its intention and made more noise than walking. Bearing down upon grandma, he inquired in a huge whisper, "How is she?"

At this juncture I opened my eyes, so he cheerfully remarked, in a strong twang known by some supercilious English as the "beastly colonial accent"--

"So you didn't peg out after all!"

This being the language applied to stock, confirmed me in the notion that he was a veterinary. I had once before heard it applied to a human being in a far bush place, where a man who lived unhappily with his wife one morning remarked to a neighbour that "The missus nearly pegged out last night," and it was considered a fitting remark for such a monster as this man was supposed to have been, but this doctor said it quite naturally.

I found him a friendly and communicative fellow, and as he gave in an hour's gossip with grandma and me for one fee, I was willing to take it to pass away a dull morning.

"What on earth did you go rowing for?" he asked me.

"The roads are too bad to go walking."

"That's only within range of the municipality. The council wants bursting up. They can't do anything with everything mortgaged to old Dr Tinker. He holds the whole thing. It's a pity he wouldn't peg out one of these nights, and we might get something done. But it's not him who has the money--it's the old woman."

"That's her Mrs Bray was tellin' us walloped the girl for bein' admired by the old doctor," explained grandma.

"Money, that's what he married her for," continued the doctor. "I don't know where he could have picked her up. Some say she is a publican's widow, but Jackson, the solicitor here, has a different hypothesis. He says he's seen her running along carrying five cups and saucers of tea at once, and no one but a ship's waitress could do that. At any rate she's a great man of a woman; can swear like a trooper if things don't go right. She's got the old man completely cowed."

"Am I to infer that cowing her spouse and swearing outrageously makes her _man_-like?" I laconically inquired. But the doctor's understanding didn't seem to go in for small satirical detail, he conversed on a more wholesale fashion, rattling on for a good half-hour to a patient for whom quietude was necessary, lest she should "peg out."

"Ain't he a bosker?" enthusiastically commented Andrew, coming in to see what I had thought of this doctor, who was the idol of Noonoon.

"Has he a large practice?" I cautiously inquired, seeking to discover was he really a doctor.

"My word! Nearly all the people go to him, he's so friendly and don't stick on the jam--speaks to you everywhere, and has jokes about everything."

"He's a fine man!" corroborated grandma.

"Yes; must be more than six feet high," I responded.

"An' such a gentleman, he's never above having a yarn with you about anythink and everythink."

"Oh, well," I said, "any time I take these turns just send for him."

One doctor was as harmless as another to me. I knew it would relieve the household to have a medico, and he could not injure me, seeing I accorded his medicine and advice about as much deference as the hum of a mosquito.

"Is he a family man?" I asked.

"Yes; so there are all your chances gone in one slap," said Carry, appearing to inquire my state.

I did not tell her there was the most insuperable of all barriers in the way of my marrying any one, and that I had no desire if I could. The first I did not want known, and the second would not be believed if it were, because, though woman is somewhat escaping from her shackles, the skin of old crawl subjection still clings sufficiently tight for it to be beyond ordinary belief that one could be other than constantly on the look-out to secure a berth by appending herself to some man, and more especially does this suspicion hang over a spinster with her hair as grey as mine, and who takes up a position at a boarding-house which is supposed to be the common hunting-ground of women forced on to the matrimonial war-path.

"He has seven little children, and one's a baby, an' his wife is a poor broken-down little thing near always in the hospital. You'd wonder how he married her, _he's_ such a fine-looking man," vouchsafed Andrew.

"Such a fine man that you'd wonder concerning several other patent facts about him," I responded.