Chapter M: F (8)

Ernest and Ada Grosvenor came in together, and to the casual observer seemed much engrossed with each other, but I noticed that Dawn could not speak or move, but a pair of quick dark eyes caught every detail. So far so good, but it was necessary for Dawn to think the prize just a little farther out of reach than it was to make it attractive to her disposition, so I set about attaining this end by a very simple method.

Miss Grosvenor had called to invite us to a meeting she had convened, to listen to a public address by a lady who was going to head a deputation to Walker afterwards, and we had decided to go. Mrs Bray's husband also dropped in, and to my surprise proved not the hen-pecked nonentity one would expect after hearing his wife's aggressive diatribes, but a stalwart man of six feet, with a comely face bespeaking solid determination in every line. And when one comes to think of it, it is not the big blustering man or woman that rules, but the quiet, apparently inane specimens that look so meek that they are held up as models of propriety and gentleness. Miss Grosvenor immediately nailed him for her meeting, and politics being the only subject discussed, he aired his particular bug. This was his disgust at the top-heaviness of the Labour party's demands, and the railway people's easy times as compared with that of the farmer.

"I believe," said he, "in every man, if he can, working only eight hours a-day--though I have to work sixteen myself for precious little return, but these fellows are running the country to blazes. The rules of supply and demand must sway the labour or any other market all the world over, and they'll have to see that and haul in their sails."

"Who are you going to vote for?" inquired Andrew.

"I'm goin' for Henderson, and the missus for Walker."

"It's a wonder you don't compel Mrs Bray to vote for your man."

"No fear; I'm pleased she's taken the opposite chap, just to illustrate my opinion on what liberty of opinion should be; but I won't deny," he concluded, with a humorous smile, "that I mightn't be so pleased with her going against me if I was set on either of them, but as it is neither are worth a vote, so that I'm pretty well sitting on a rail myself."

"I thought your first announcement almost too liberal to be true," laughed Miss Grosvenor.

"No, I will say that Mr Bray is a man does treat his women proper, and give 'em liberty," said grandma.

"An' a nice way they use it," sniffed Carry _sotto voce_.

As we set out to the meeting Miss Grosvenor mentioned to me that she was endeavouring to find suitable speakers to address her association, and asked did I know of any one. Here was an opening for a thrust in the game of parry I was setting on foot between Dawn and Ernest Breslaw.

"Ask my friend Mr Ernest to deliver an address: 'Women in Politics,'" I said, "that is his particular subject. He is a most fluent speaker, and loves speaking in public, nothing will delight him more."

"I'll ask him at once," said she.

This was as foundationless a fairy-tale as was ever spun, for Ernest could not say two words in public upon any occasion. That he was usually tendered a dinner and was called upon to make a speech, he considered the drawback of wresting any athletic honours. Whether women were in politics or the wash-house was a sociological abstrusity beyond his line of thought, and not though it cost him all his fortune to refuse could he have decently addressed any association even on beloved sporting matters. Hence his consternation when Miss Grosvenor approached him. At first he was nonplussed, and next thing, taking it as a joke on my part, was highly amused. Miss Grosvenor, on her side, thought he was joking, with the result that there was the liveliest and most laughable conversation between them.

Dawn did not know the reason of it. She could only see that Ernest and Miss Grosvenor were engrossed, and at first curious, a little later she was annoyed with the former.

"I think," she whispered to me, "it's Mr Ernest you'll have to see doesn't flirt with every girl he comes across."

"Perhaps he isn't flirting," I coolly replied.

"Not _now_, perhaps," she said pointedly; "perhaps he's in earnest with one and practises with others."

Arrived at the hall, we found the women swarming around Walker like bees.

"Good Lord! Look what Les. has let himself in for," laughed Ernest; "I wouldn't stand in his shoes for a tenner."

"Go on! Surely you too are partial to ladies?"

"Yes; but--"

"But there must be reason in everythink," I quoted. He laughed.

"Yes; and reason in this sort of thing to suit my taste would be a small medium. But what a fine old sport the old dame Clay would have made--no danger of her not standing up to a mauling or baulking at any of her fences, eh?"

Dawn would not look at Ernest after the meeting and deputation came to an end, but walked home with "Dora" Eweword, laughing and talking in ostentatious enjoyment; while Ernest and the Grosvenor girl were none the less entertained.

"'Pon my soul, I couldn't make a speech to save my life," he reiterated. "My friend only laid you on for a lark, did you not?" he said, turning to me, whom he gallantly insisted upon supporting on his arm--that splendid arm in which the muscles could expand till they were like iron bands.

"Don't you believe him, Miss Grosvenor," I replied; "he's a born orator, but is unaccountably lazy and vain, and only wants to be pressed; insist upon his speaking, he's longing to do so." And then his merry protesting laugh, and the girl's equally happy, rang out on the crisp starlight air, as they went over and over the same ground.

As we neared Clay's I suggested that he should see Miss Grosvenor home, while I attached myself to Dawn and "Dora"; and I invited him to come and sing some songs with us afterwards, for the night was yet young.

To this he agreed, and supposed to be with the other young couple, I slipped behind, and could hear their conversation as they progressed.

"You're not struck on that red-headed mug, are you?" said Eweword, for general though political talk had become, there was still another branch of politics more vitally interesting to some of the electors.

"I'm not the style to be struck on a fellow that doesn't care for me."

"But he does!"

"Looks like it, doesn't it?" she said sarcastically.

"Yes, it does, or what would he be hanging around here so long for?"

"Perhaps to see Ada Grosvenor; I suppose she'd have him, red hair and all."

"Pooh! he never goes there; but he comes to your place though, too deuced often for my pleasure."

"He comes to see the boarder--he's a great friend of hers."

"Humph! that's all in my eye. He'd be a long time coming to see her if you weren't there, if she was twice as great a friend. What sort of an old party is she? Must have some means."

"Oh, lovely!"

"I suppose the red-headed mug thinks so too, as she is touting for him."

"For him and Ada Grosvenor."

"Have it that way if you like it, but you know what I mean all right."

"I don't."

"Oh, don't you! I say, Dawn, just stop out here a moment will you? I want to tell you something else, I mean."

"Oh, tell it to me some other time," said she, "it's too beastly cold to stay out another minute. Come and tell it to me while we are having supper round the fire."

"I'd have a pretty show of telling it there. I don't want it put in the 'Noonoon Advertiser,' but that's what I'll have to do if you won't give me a chance. If you keep pretending you don't get my letters, I'll write all that I put in them to your grandma, and tell her to tell you," he said jokingly; but the girl took him up shortly.

"If you dare do that," said she, aroused from her indifference, "I'd never speak to you again the longest day I live, so you needn't think you'll get over me that way. You'd better tell Uncle Jake and Andrew too while you're about it, and Dora Cowper might be vexed if you don't tell her."

"Well, I bet you'd listen to what the red-headed mug said quick enough," replied "Dora" Eweword in an injured tone.

"The red-headed mug, as you call him--and his hair isn't much redder than yours, and is twice as nice," she retaliated, "he would be a gentleman anyhow, and not a bear with a scalded head."

By this time they had reached the gate, and Dawn was carelessly inviting him to enter, but he declined in rather a crestfallen tone.

"Better invite red-head, not me, if you won't listen to what I say, and pretend you never received my letters."

"Thank you for the good advice. I hope he'll accept my invitation, because he is always pleasant and agreeable," she retorted.

NINETEEN.

AN OPPORTUNELY INOPPORTUNE DOUCHE.

It was just as well that "Dora" Eweword had been too chopfallen to come in, for we found the place in what grandma termed "a uproar."

As we had gone out Mrs Bray had arrived to relate her speculations in regard to Mrs Rooney-Molyneux. Mrs Bray did not live a great distance from the latter's cottage, and as she had not seen her about during the day, wondered had she come to her travail.

Andrew decided the matter when he came home by relating what he had heard when passing the cottage; and he supplemented the statement by the deplorable information that "the old bloke is up at Jimmeny's tryin' if he can get a free drink."

"I must go to her," said grandma, rising in haste.

"I wouldn't if I was you," said Mrs Bray. "You don't never get no thanks for nothing like that, and might get yourself into a mess; I believe in leaving people to manage their own affairs."

Carry sniffed in the background.

"I'll risk all that," said grandma. "For shame's sake an' the sake of me daughters, an' every other woman, I couldn't leave one of me sex in that predicament."

"Oh, well, some people is wonderful strong in the nerve that way," said Mrs Bray, and Carry interjected in an aside--

"And others are mighty strong in the nerve of selfishness."

"Of course nothing would give me greater pleasure than to go," continued Mrs Bray, "but I would be of no use. I'm so pitiful, sensitive, and nervous that way."

"It's a grand thing, then, that some are hard and not so sensitive, or people could die and no one would help 'em," said Carry, no longer able to contain her measure of Mrs Bray.

Uncle Jake had the sulky in readiness, and grandma with a collection of requisites appeared with a great old shawl about her, Irish fashion.

"Come you, Dawn, I might want your help, I'm not as strong as I was once; and Andrew, you come too, you'll do to send for the doctor; an' who'll take care of the pony?"

I volunteered, and though a rotten stick to depend on, was accepted, and we three women rode in the sulky while Andrew ran behind. Having arrived at the little cottage half-way between Clay's and town, we found it was too sadly true that the poor little woman was alone in her trouble, and worse, she had not had the means to prepare for it, while most ghastly of all, there was no trace of her having had any nourishment that day.

These are the sad cases of poverty, when the helpless victim is not of the calibre which can beg, and suffers an empty larder in silence and behind an appearance of respectability.

The capable old grandmother had prepared herself for this possibility, and from under her capacious shawl produced a bottle of broth which she set about warming. She may not have been at first-hand acquainted with the few silk-wrapped lives run according to the methods scheduled in first-class etiquette books, but she had a very resourceful and far-seeing grip of that style of existence into which, regardless of inclination or capability, the great majority are forced by domineering circumstance; and being competent to grapple with its emergencies, she took hold of this case without humbug and with the fortitude and skill of a Japanese general.

As though the main trouble were not enough, the poor little wife was further smitten with the two-edged mental anguish which is the experience of sensitive women whose husbands neglect them at this crisis of the maternal gethsemane. Doctor Smalley, who soon appeared after receiving Andrew's message, was not sufficiently finely strung to fully estimate the evil effect of Rooney-Molyneux's behaviour at this juncture; but not so the fine old woman of the ranks, with her quick perceptions and high and sensitive sentiment regarding the bed-rock relations of life. Calling the doctor out during an interval she discussed the matter within my hearing.

"Poor little thing, she's just heart-broke with the way her husband's carryin' on. I wish I could deliver him up to Mrs Bray to scald; he's one of 'em deserves it, pure an' simple! If Jim Clay had forsook me an' demeaned me like this I would have died, but he was always tenderer than a mother. Somethink will have to be done. I'll send Andrew to Jimmeny's with the sulky to get him; he can get Danby to help him if he can't manage him hisself, and take the old varmint down to my place and keep him there secure. Tell Jake there it's got to be done, an' I'll make up a yarn to pacify the poor thing;" and returning to her patient, to the old dame's credit, truthful though she was, I heard her say--

"Your husband's been fidgeting me, an' I never can stand any one but the doctor about at these times, so I bundled him off down to stay with Jake, and gave him strict instructions not to poke his nose back here till he's sent for."

What diplomat could have made it more kindly tactful than that?

"Quite right too," said the doctor, upholding her. "When I see it's going to be a good case like this, I always banish the man too."

"But I could have seen him, and the poor fellow I'm sure is overwhelmed with anxiety," said the hapless little martyr in the brave make-believe that is a compulsory science with most women.

"Well, _we_ ain't so anxious about him as we are about you," said the valiant old woman. "You're the chief person now. He ain't no consideration at all, an' can go an' bag his head for all we care, while we get you out of this fix."

I sat upon the verandah until Andrew passed, taking home with him the noble Rooney-Molyneux, lordly scion of an ancient and doubtless effete house, and then the doctor banished Dawn from the house, giving her into my charge, with instructions to take her home and calm her down.

Had she been the heroine of a romance she would have been a born nurse. Without any training or experience she could have surpassed Florence Nightingale, but, alas! she was merely an everyday girl in real life, and this being her first actual experience of the tragedy of birth, and the terror of it being intensified and aggravated by the pitiable surrounding circumstances, she was beside herself. She clung to me, choked with a flood of tears, and palpitating in an unbearable tumult of emotion.

This case, so pathetically ordinary that most of us are debased by acquaintance with similar, to this girl was fresh, and striking her in all its inexcusable barbarity without any extenuating gloze, made her furious with pained and righteous indignation.

I led her about by devious ways that her heart might cool ere we reached Clay's.

The cloudless, breezeless night, though not yet severely cold, was crisp with the purity of frost and sweet with the exquisite scent of flowering loquats. The only sounds breaking its stillness were the trains passing across the long viaduct approaching the bridge, and the rumble of the vehicles as they ground their homeward way along the stony road, their lights flashing as they passed, and snatches of the occupants' conversation reaching us where we walked on a path beside the main thoroughfare. The heavens were a spangled glory, and the dark sleeping lands gave forth a fresh, pleasant odour. Man provided the only discordant note; but for the jarring of his misdoings there would have been perfect peace.

Oh, the hot young heart that raged by my side! I too had forded the cruel torrent of facts that was torturing her mind; I knew; I understood. By-and-by she would arrive at my phase and have somewhat of my calmness, but to tell her so would merely have been the preaching so deservedly and naturally abhorred by the young, and except for holding her hand in a tight clasp, I was apparently unresponsive.

As she grew quieter I steered for home, and eventually we arrived at the door of the kitchen and found there Jake, Andrew, and the Rooney-Molyneux--a small man with a large beard and the type of aristocratic face furnished with a long protruding nose and a narrow retreating forehead. Carry, up aloft like the angels, could be heard practising on my piano, and the soiled utensils scattered on the table illustrated that the gentlemen had had refreshments.

It being Dawn's week in the kitchen, she set about collecting the cups in the wash-up dish, and presently some maudlin expression of sentiment on the part of the Rooney-Molyneux reopened the vials of her indignation.

"I'm naturally anxious that it may be a son," he drivelled, "as there are so few male representatives of the old name now."

"And the sooner there's none the better. There is no excuse for the likes of you being alive. I'd like to assist in the extermination of your family by putting you in the boiling copper on washing day. That would give you a taste of your deserts," raged the girl.

She was speaking without restraint in the light of the high demands of crude, impetuous, merciless youth. I had once felt as she did, but now I could see the cruel train of conditions behind certain characters forcing them into different positions, and in place of Dawn's wholesome, justifiable, hot-headed rage against the likes of Rooney-hyphen, I felt for him a contempt so immeasurable that it almost toppled over and became pity.

Seeing the little sense of responsibility that is inculcated regarding the laws of being, instead of being shocked at the familiarity of the Rooney-Molyneux type of husband and father, I gave myself up to agreeable surprise owing to the large number of noble and worthy parents I had discovered.

"The world does soil our minds and we soil it--
Time brings the tolerance that hides the truth,"

but Dawn had not yet sunk to the apathy engendered by experience and familiarity. She adjudged the case on its merits, as it would be handled by an administrator of the law--the common law we all must keep. She did not imagine a network of exculpatory conditions or go squinting round corners to draw it into line as an act for which circumstances rather than the culprit were responsible; she gazed straight and honestly and saw a crime.

"Dawn, you shameless hussy, you ought to be ashamed of yourself," said her uncle.

"Oh yes, I'm well aware that any girl who says the straight truth about the things that concern them most in life, _ought_ to be ashamed of herself. They should hold their tongues except to flatter the men who trample them in the dust,--that's the proper and _womanly_ attitude for a girl, I know," she said desperately.

"I'm sure this is uncalled for," simpered the hero of the act, rising and showing signs of looking for his hat.

"You'd better run and tell your wife you've been insulted, poor little dear!" said Dawn.

"Look!" said Andrew to me uneasily, "tell Dawn to dry up, will you; she'll take no notice of me, an' if that feller goes home actin' the goat I'll get the blame, an' he ain't drunk enough to be shut up. Blow him, I say!"

"I'm sure," said Mr Rooney-Molyneux, who apparently had various things mixed with politics, "that some men, though the women have taken the votes and their manhood, still have some rights; bless me, it _must_ be acknowledged they have some rights in creation!"

Here he made an ineffectual grab for his hat and a sprawling plunge in the direction of the door, saying, "I've never been so insulted!"

"Blow you! Sit down, Mr Mooney-Rollyno, or whatever you are," said Andrew, "you've got to stay here; and Dawn, hold your mag! You'd give any one the pip with your infernal gab."

"I'm sure it must be conceded that men have some rights?" Mr Rooney-Molyneux appealed to me. I was the most responsible person present, Uncle Jake did not count, the other three were children, and so it behoved me to take a grip of the situation.

"Rights in creation! I should rather think so! In creation men have the rights, or perhaps duties, of gods--to protect, to nurture, to guard and to love, and when as a majority men rise to them we shall be a great people, but for the present the only rights many of them wrest and assert by mere superior brute force are those of bullies and selfish cowards. Sit down immediately!"

He sat without delay.

"All that Dawn says of you is deserved. The least you can do now to repair matters is to swallow your pill noiselessly and give no further trouble until you are called upon to obstruct the way again in semblance of discharging responsibilities of which a cat would be twice as capable."

"Yes," said Dawn, "if you dare to talk of going home to worry your wife I'll throw this dish of water right on you, and when I come to think of things, I feel like throwing a hot one on every man."

As she said this she swirled her dishcloth to clean the bowl, and turning to toss the water into the drain outside the door, confronted Ernest Breslaw.

Quite two hours had elapsed since he had parted from us to conduct Miss Grosvenor to her home, where he had been long delayed in argument concerning whether he could or could not address a public meeting. I discovered later that an opportunity to gracefully take his leave from Grosvenor's had not occurred earlier, and that he had quite relinquished hope of calling at Clay's that night, but to his surprise, seeing the place lighted as he was passing, he came towards the kitchen door.

Dawn was doubtless piqued that he should have spent so much time with Miss Grosvenor, which, considering his previous attentions to her, and the rules of the game as observed in this stratum of society, gave him the semblance of flirting--perfidious action, worthy of the miscreant man in the beginning of a career which at a maturer stage should cover cruelty and cowardice equalling that of Rooney-Molyneux! Dawn lacked restraint in her emotional outbursts; the poor girl's state of nervousness bordered on hysteria; the water was nearly out of her hand in any case, and with a smack of that irritated divergence from lawful and decorous conduct of which the sanest of us are at times the victim, she pitched the dish of greasy, warm water fairly on the immaculate young athlete, accompanying the action with the ejaculation--

"That's what you deserve, too!"

"I demand--" he exclaimed, but further utterance was drowned by a hearty guffaw from Andrew which fully confirmed the outrageous insult.

"Just what I should expect of you," sneered Uncle Jake, while Mr Rooney-Molyneux, his attention thus diverted from his own affairs, gazed in watery-eyed surprise at a second victim of the retributive Dawn.

"Well, that's about what you'd expect from a _thing earning her living_, but never of a young lady in a _good_ home of her own and living with _the mother of a family_," said Carry, appearing in time to witness the accident.

I said nothing to the white-faced girl, for there was more urgent work to be done in repairing the damage. Hurrying through the house, and reefing my skirts on the naked rose-bushes under Miss Flipp's window, where the dead girl's skirts had caught as she went out to die, I gained a point intercepting Ernest as he strode along the path leading to the bridge.

"Ernest!"

"You must excuse me to-night," he said, showing that my intervention was most unwelcome.

"Ernest, if you have any friendship for me, stop. I must speak to you, and I'm not feeling able for much more to-night."

Thus did I make a lever of my invalidism, and in the gentleness of his strength he submitted to be detained.

Some men would have covered their annoyance with humorous satire, but Ernest was not furnished with this weapon. He only had physical strength, and that could not avail him in such an instance. I placed my hand on his arm, ostensibly for support, but in reality to be sure of his detention, and found that he was saturated. Not a pleasant experience on a frosty night, but there was no danger of it proving deleterious to one in his present state of excitement. Being one of those natures whose emotions, though not subtle, make up for this deficiency in wholesome thoroughness, he was furious with the rage of heated youth not given to spending itself on every adventitious excuse for annoyance, and debarred by conditions from any sort of retaliation. In addition to being bitterly wounded, his sporting instinct was bruised, and he chafed under the unfairness of the blow.

The beauty of the cloudless, breezeless night had been supplemented by a lop-sided moon, risen sufficiently to show the exquisite mists hanging like great swathes of white gossamer in the hollows, and to cast the shadows of the buildings and trees in the silent river, at this time of the year looking so cold and treacherous in its rippleless flow. The wet grass was stiffening with frost, and the only sounds disturbing the chillier purity of advancing night were the erratic bell at the bridge and the far-off rumble of a train on the mountain-side. Man still afforded the discordant note, and the only heat in the surroundings was that in the burning young heart that raged by my side.

Oh, youth! youth! You must each look back and see for yourselves, in the aft-light cast by later experience, the mountains and fiery ordeals you made for yourselves out of mole-hills in the matter of heart-break. We, whose hair is white, cannot help you, though we have gone before and know so well the cruel stretches on the road you travel.

Ernest waited for me to take the initiative, and as everything that rose to my lips seemed banal, we stood awkwardly silent till he was forced into saying--

"I'm afraid you are overdoing yourself. Can I not help you to your room? You will be ill."

"The only thing that would overdo me is that you should be upset about this. It must not make any difference."

"Difference between you and me?--nothing short of an earthquake could do that," he replied.

"I mean with Dawn. It must not make any difference with her. It was only a freak."

"Certainly; I would be a long time retaliating upon a _lady_, no matter what she did to me; but when--when--" (he could not bring himself to name it, it struck him as so disgraceful)--"she intimates to me, as plainly as was done to-night, that she disapproves of my presence in her house, well, a fellow would want pole-axing if he hadn't pride to take a hint like that."

"She did not mean anything. She will be more hurt than you are."

"Mean anything! Had it been a joke I could have managed to endure it, or an accident about which she would have worried, I would have been amused, but it was deliberate; and if it had been _clean_ water--but ugh! it was greasy slop-water, to make it as bad as it could be; and if a man had done it--"

The muscles of his arm expanded under my interested touch as he made a fist of the strong brown hand.

"But being a girl I can only put up with it," he said with the helplessness of the athlete in dealing with such a delinquent.

"Did you hear what she said too? Great Scott! it is not as though I had done her any harm! I merely came here to see a friend, and made myself agreeable because you said she was good to you; and, dear me!" His voice broke with the fervour of his perturbation. He had been wounded to the core of his manly _amour propre_; and to state that he was not more than twenty-five, gives a better idea of his state of mind than could any amount of laborious diagnosis.

"What can I have done?" he further ejaculated. "Can some one have told her falsely that I'm a cad in any way? She might have waited until she proved it. _I_ would not have believed bad any one spoken badly of _her_." (Here an inadvertent confession of the growing affection he felt for her.) "Even if I were deserving of such ignominy, it was none of her business. I only came to see you,--she had nothing to do with me."

Then I took hold of this splendidly muscular young creature wounded to the quick. I determinedly usurped a mother's privilege in regard to the situation, and glancing back over my barren life I would that I had been mother of just such a son. What a kingdom 'twould have been; and, in the order of things, being forced to surrender him to another's keeping, I could not have chosen a better or more suitable than Dawn. Entering his principality to reign as queen, while his manhood was yet an unsacked stronghold, she was of the character and determination to steer him in the way of uprightness to the end.

Wistfulness upsprung as I reviewed my empty life, but rude reality suddenly uprose and obliterated ideality. It put on the scroll a picture of motherhood, and mother-love wantonly squandered, trodden in the mire, and, instead of being recognised as a kingdom, treated only as a weakness, and traded upon to enslave women. I turned with a sigh, and we walked round a corner of the garden where, in one recent instance, appallingly common, a poor frail woman had crept out in the dead of night to pay alone the penalty of a crime incurred by two--one foolish and weak, the other murderously selfishly a coward.

I addressed Ernest Breslaw regarding the painful effect this tragedy had produced on the mind of Dawn, and how it had been further overstrung by the later one, and concluded--

"Had I expressed my inward feelings in outward actions at Dawn's age, and being armed with a dish of water, to have thrown it on the nearest individual would have been a very mild ebullition; but I set my teeth against outward expression and let it fester in my heart, while the beauty of Dawn's disposition is that her feelings all come out. She has disgraced herself by making outward demonstration of what many inwardly feel; but understanding what I have put before you, you must not hold the girl responsible for her action."

With masculine simplicity he was unable to comprehend the complexity of feminine emotions engendered by the exigencies of the more artificial and suppressed conditions of life as forced upon women.

"I understand about old Rooney; I feel as disgusted with him as any one does, but _I_ am not going to emulate him. I'd jolly well cut my throat first; and if I could lay my hand on the snake at the root of the drowning case, I'd make one to roast him alive! What made Miss Dawn confound me with that sort?"

"She doesn't for an instant do so. On the contrary, she would be the first to repudiate such a suggestion."

"Good Lord! then why did she throw that stuff on me? It was only fit for a criminal."

"Can you not grasp that she was irritated beyond endurance with the unwholesomeness of the whole system of life in relation to women, and that for the moment you appeared as one of the army of oppressors?"

"But that isn't fair! _I_ know enough of women--some women--to make one shudder with repulsion; but there would be no sense or justice in venting my disgust on you or the other good ones," he contended.

"Quite so; but our moral laws are such that some issues are more repulsive to a woman than a man, and you must admit there are heavy arguments could be brought in extenuation of Dawn's attitude of mind when the water slipped out of her hand."

"There's no doubt women do have to swallow a lot," he said.

"You don't feel so angry on account of the impetuous Dawn's act now, do you?"

"It doesn't look so bad in the teeth of your argument, and if she would only say something to explain, I won't mind; but otherwise I'll have sense to make myself scarce in this neighbourhood."

"I'm afraid her vanity will be too wounded for her to give in."

"I'll make it as easy for her as I can; but, good Lord! I can't go to her and apologise because she threw dirty water on me."

"Well, I'll bid you good-night. I must run in to Dawn. I expect she is sobbing her heart out by this, and biting her pretty curled lips to relieve her feelings,--her lips that were meant for kisses, not cruel usage."

"Good heavens! Do you really think she'll feel like that?" he asked in astonishment.

"I'm certain."

"But I can't see why--she might have had reason had I been the aggressor."

"If you had hurt her she would not feel half so bad. You would be a hopeless booby if you could not understand that."

"Really, now, if I thought she would take it that way, it would make all the difference in the world. But had she desired to despatch me, half that energy of insult would do," he said, drawing up, while hardness crept into his voice, but it softened again as he concluded--

"I wouldn't like her to be upset about it, though, if she didn't quite mean it."

"Well, you can be sure that in regard to you she was very far from meaning it, and that she will be dreadfully upset about it; so think of what I've said, and come and see me in the morning."

Now that he had grown calm, he was shivering with the cold, so I bade him run home.

On returning to the house I found Andrew the solitary watcher of his charge, who, covered by an old cloak, was snoring on the kitchen sofa.

"Dear me, where are they all?"

"In bed; and look at his nibbs there. I reckon I took a wrinkle from Dawn as how to manage him. Soon as every one's back was turned he began actin' the goat again an' makin' for home, an' I thought here goes, I don't care a hang if all the others roused on me like blazes, so long as grandma don't,--she's the only one makes me sit up,--so I flung water on him, not warm water but real cold. It took seven years' growth out of him, an' then I gave him a drink of hot coffee, an' undressed him, an' he was jolly glad to lay down there."

"Why, you'll give the man a cold!"

"No jolly fear. I took his clothes off. I've got 'em dryin' here. I couldn't find any of my gear, an' wasn't game to ask Uncle Jake, so I clapped him into a night-dress of grandma's. Look! he's got his hand out. I reckon the frill looks all so gay, don't you? I bet grandma will rouse, but I'll have a little peace with him now an' chance the ducks," said the resourceful warder, whose charge really looked so absurd that I was provoked to laughter.

"How did you manage him? Was he tractable?"

"He soon dropped that there was no good in bein' nothing else. He spluttered something about me disgracin' him, because something on his crest said he was brave or something; but I told him I didn't care a hang if he had a crest the size of a cockatoo or was as bald as Uncle Jake, that I was full of him actin' the goat, an' that finished him."

"Enough too," I laughed, as I bade the Australian lad, with the very Australian estimate of the unimportance of some things sacred to English minds, the Australian parting salute--

"So long!"

TWENTY.

"ALAS! HOW EASILY THINGS GO WRONG!"

On ascending to my room I did not, as expected, find Dawn sobbing, but she had her face so determinedly turned away that I refrained from remark. I was none the worse for the diverting incidents of the evening, because the excitement of them had come from without instead of within. The rush of the trains soon became a far-away sound, and the light that flashed from their engine-doors as they climbed the first zig of the mountain, and which could be seen from my bed, had been shut from my sight by the fogs of approaching sleep, when I was aroused by heart-broken sobbing from the bed by the opposite wall.

After a while I got out of bed, bent on an attempt to comfort.

"Dawn, what is it?"

"I'm sorry I waked you, I thought you were sound asleep," she said, pulling in with a violent effort but speedily breaking into renewed sobs.

"I was thinking of poor little Mrs Rooney-Molyneux, and how my mother died," said the girl, rolling over and burying her lovely head in her tear-drenched pillow. "I can't help thinking about the sadness and cruelty of life to women."

I felt certain that a matter less deep and lying farther from the core of being was perturbing her more, but as she chose to ignore it, I did likewise.

"Well, we must not dwell too sadly on that for which we are not responsible, and women are privileged in being able to repay the cost of their being."

"Yes, I always remember that, and often shudder to think I might have been a man, with their greater possibilities of cowardliness and selfish cruelty, as illustrated by old Rooney and Miss Flipp's destroyer."

Not a word concerning her action to Ernest. Thought of it stung too much for mention, so there was nothing to do but comfort her till she fell asleep and await from Ernest the next turn of events bearing on the situation.

The next turn of events in the Clay household bore down upon us next morning after breakfast when grandma came home, having left the first-born of Rooney-Molyneux comfortably asleep in the swaddling clothes which had contained Dawn at the date when she had been "a little winjin' thing," with whom everything had disagreed, and which garments were lent to the new-born babe until grandma could provide him with others. The hale old dame was not too fatigued to be in a state of lively ire, and opened fire upon her circle with--

"I met old Hollis on the way home, an' do you believe, he says to me, 'Well, Mrs Clay, so I believe you've took to rabbit ketchin' in your old days.' It was like his cheek, the same as w'en he said the monkeys would be havin' a vote next. _Rabbit ketchin'_ indeed! No wonder women has got sense at last to make the birth-rate decline, when you see cases like that, and even the people that go to help them out of the fix--an' that out of kindness, not for no reward nor pleasure--is demeaned to their face an' called _rabbit ketchers_, if you please! I reckon all women ought to be compelled to be _rabbit ketchers_ for a time, an' it would be such a eye-opener to them that if there wasn't some alterations made in the tone of the whole business they would all strike so there'd be no need of _rabbit ketchin'_, as some call it, to make things more disagreeabler; and that's what has been goin' on lately in a underhand way, but _some people_," concluded the intelligent old lady with her customary choler, coming to a full stop ere recapitulating the misdoings of these unmentionable members of society.

"Rabbit ketching," as midwifery is contemptuously termed in the vernacular, does require a status, and those who have need of it merit some consideration. Civilisation, stretching up to recognise that every child is a portion of State wealth, may presently make some movement to recognise maternity as a business or office needing time and strength, not as a mere passing detail thrown in among mountains of other slavery.

During the whole forenoon I busied myself with the construction of garments for the new arrival in this vale of woe, and at the same time was on the alert for the commanded appearance of Ernest Breslaw. Instead of himself he sent as messenger a well-spoken lad, who presented Mr Ernest's compliments, and hoped that I was not feeling any ill effects from my unusual exertion during the previous evening.

I sent a request, per return, that he should call upon me during the afternoon, but he did not regard it. The next being Dawn's day for Sydney, I waited for this event to hatch some progress in the case, but upon her return she had no favours to share with me or merry tale to tell of being taken to afternoon tea by Ernest.

Eweword figured in this account, and so prominently as to suggest that her talk of the fun she had had with him was a little forced, so on the following morning I took it upon myself to call upon the backward knight in his own castle. Unmooring one of the boats, I rowed with great caution obliquely across the stream till, reaching the desired pier, I tethered my craft and ascended among an orange-grove laden with its golden fruit, and between the rattling canes of the vineyard dismantled by winter, till I reached the house where at present my young friend sojourned, and I was thankful that bleached as well as unfaded locks having their own peculiar privileges, I was able to make this call with propriety.

The young gentleman was in, and without delay appeared to the beautiful lady's self-directed and appointed ambassadress.

"I suppose I may pay you a visit," I said with a smile as he seated me in the drawing-room which we had to ourselves. "As you didn't seem to care whether I were dead or alive I have come over to practically illustrate that I'm still above ground. Why did you not come to see me?"

Ernest reddened and fidgeted, and said haltingly--

"You know if you had been ill I would have been the first to go to you, but I knew you were quite well, and I've been so busy," he finished lamely.

"Now, you know that I know that you have been idle--quite unendurably idle," I retorted, a remark he received in embarrassed silence, which endured till I broke it with--

"Well, I suppose you are waiting for me to divulge the real object of my pilgrimage, and that is to know why you haven't kept your agreement about making that little mistake as easy as you could for Miss Dawn. She's fretting herself pale about it."

Ernest stood up, his colour flaming into his tanned cheeks till they were as bright as his locks, while he made as though to speak once or twice, but hesitated, and at length exclaimed--

"This is not fair--you must, you have no reason to bother--you," and there he foundered. Ernest could neither lie, snub, nor evade. He was totally devoid of all the attributes of a smart politician.

"Have you not sufficient faith in my regard for you to trust my motive in thus apparently seeking to pry into your private life?" I asked.

"You know I think more of you than any one, and I'll tell you the whole thing," he replied, taking a seat beside me.

"You have made a mistake in assuming that Miss Clay, or whatever her real name might be (his indifference was well assumed), did not fully mean her action, and I was a fool to believe you when I had more than sufficient proof to the contrary. Yesterday morning I happened to go to Sydney in the same train as she did, and as I happened--entirely by chance and quite unexpectedly--to meet her on the platform, I lifted my hat as usual to make it easy for her, and a nice fool I made of myself. She didn't merely pretend not to see me, but hurried by me in contempt and came back with that Eweword, who glared at me as though I were a tramp who had attempted to molest her. I am sure you could not expect me to go any farther than that, and I only did that because you call her a friend of yours. Perhaps Eweword doesn't do things that necessitate the throwing of dirty water on him. It was rather an uncalled-for thing to do to any one. Perhaps the old dame doesn't allow her boarders to have visitors, and that is the polite way they have of informing one to the contrary."

The sky looked rather murky. I said nothing, having nothing ready to say.

"Oh, by the way, I'm leaving here to-morrow for Adelaide, where I am to play in some inter-colonial football matches against the New Zealanders. Is there anything I could do for you over there?" he said, as though having dismissed the other unworthy trifle from his mind.

"Going to run away because a girl, half accidentally and half out of nervous irritation, threw a little water on you!"

There I had said what I really thought, and half expected the snub which, according to the rules of tact, I deserved for my divergence therefrom, but it did not come; he was a man of the field, and in this type of encounter had not a chance against one of my perceptions.

He laughed forcedly. "That would be something to turn tail for, wouldn't it?"

"But are you not doing so? If a beautiful girl did such a thing to me it would only make me the more set to woo her to graciousness," I said.

"Perhaps so, if she were some girl you specially considered, but in the case of a passing stranger that I may never meet again, it would not be worth wasting time, especially as her action was so uncalled for and unwomanly."

"But you are sure to meet her again if you continue our friendship, as I hope to have her with me, and that is why I'm taking the trouble to thus interfere in what does not apparently concern either you or me very much. _I_ don't consider Dawn as a passing stranger. I think her especially honest and especially beautiful, and it worries me to think she has thus erred. Her action was _unwomanly_, if you like, but peculiarly feminine, with the unavoidable hysterical femininity engendered in women by their subjected environment. Are you quite sure you consider Dawn merely a passing stranger not worth consideration?" I asked, looking him fair in the eyes; and the quick lowering of them and the tightening of his mouth satisfied me that he could not truthfully answer in the affirmative.

"It is a matter of what she considers me," he said.

"Oh, well," I said indifferently, now that I had gained my point, "it doesn't matter to me, but I'll be sorry to lose your company, and I thought you were taking an interest in Leslie's candidature, and we could have enjoyed it together."

"So I do."

"Well, come back as soon as you get these matches played, and we'll have some good times together again, and I'll keep the reprehensible Dawn out of the way; and anyhow, remember she didn't throw _cold_ water on you, and that's something."

"Very well, I'll be back in about three weeks' time to see how Les. gets on. Polling-day hasn't been fixed yet. I'd like to see it through now I've started."

"Of course," said I, considering it a good move that he should disappear for a short time, and after this he rowed me on the Noonoon till Clay's dinner-bell sounded and I went up to eat.

That evening "Dora" Eweword came in to tea and remained afterwards. He informed us that the red-headed chap who had been loafing around Kelman's had gone to Europe.

"Has he? Did he tell you?" interestedly inquired Andrew.

"He mentioned that he would leave for South Australia by the express this evening," I replied, but did not add that his going to Europe was a little stretched.

Dawn was quiet. Her merry impudence did not enliven the company that night, and after tea, when Eweword caught her alone for a few moments as I was leaving the room, he said--

"So you cleared the red-headed mug out after all. Andrew says it was alright. You won't listen to me, but you haven't chucked the wash-up water on me yet, that's one thing." His complacence was very pronounced. To his surprise Dawn made no reply, but biting her lip to keep back her tears, walked out of the room, and in the dark of the passage smote her dimpled palms together, exclaiming--

"Would to heaven I had thrown the water over this galoot instead of _him_," and the thermometer of "Dora's" self-satisfaction fell considerably when she did not appear again that evening.

That night, when the waning moon got far enough on her westward way to surmount the old house on the knoll beside the Noonoon and cast its shadow in the deep clear water, the silver beams strayed through a little window facing the great ranges, and found the features of a beautiful sleeper disfigured by weeping; but youth's rest was sound despite the tear-stains, and the old moon smiled at such ephemeral sorrow. The night wind coming down the gorges with the river sighed along the valley as the moon remembered all the faces which, though tearless under her nocturnal inspection, yet were pale from the inward sobs, only giving outward evidence in bleaching locks and shadowy eyes. Even within sound of the engines roaring down the spur, many of the little night-wrapped houses, hard set upon the plain, had inmates kept from sleep by deeper sorrows than Dawn had ever known.

The first fortnight of Ernest's absence, believed by his doubting young lady to be final, was a stirring time in Noonoon, and particularly full at Clay's. Jam-making was the star item on the latter's domestic bill. Baskets and baskets of golden oranges and paler lemons and shaddocks were converted into jam and marmalade, and ranged on the shelves of the already replete storehouse, in readiness to tempt the summer palate of the week-end boarders which should appear when the days stretched out again. We were occupied in this business to such an extent that the sight of oranges became a weariness, and Andrew averred that the very name of marmalade gave him the pip.

At night we enjoyed the diversion of the meetings, and talk and gossip of them made conversation for the days. The previously mentioned political addresses were but mild fanfares by comparison with the flamboyance of the gasconading now in progress, and in its reports of these bursts of oratory the 'Noonoon Advertiser' gave further evidence of its broad-minded liberality.

"Mrs Gas Ranter," it reported, "addressed a packed meeting in the Citizens' Hall last night, and proved herself the best public speaker who has been heard in Noonoon during the present campaign," &c. It recognised worth, and gamely gave the palm to the deserving, irrespective of party or sex,--did not so much as insert the narrow quibble that she was the best for a woman.

Among other incidents, the lady canvassers called at Clay's and received a piece of grandma's mind.

"Thanks; I don't want no one to tell me how to vote. I've rared two or three families and gave a hand with more, and have intelligence the same as others, and at my time of my life don't want no one to tell me my business. I reckon I could tell a good many others how to vote."