Chapter M: F (9)

The pity of it was that it was immaterial how any electors cast their vote. Neither party had a sensible grip of affairs, and besides, love of country in a patriotic way is not a trait engendered in Australians. In politics, as in private life, all is selfishness. The city people thought only of building a greater Sydney, the residents of Noonoon and other little towns had mind for nothing but their own small centre,--all seeing no farther than their noses, or that what directly benefited their little want might not be good for the country at large, and that legislature must, to be successful, better the living conditions of the masses, not merely of one class or section. Then city men, unacquainted with the practical working of the land, could not possibly handle the land question effectively, and, moreover, a man might understand how to manage the coastal district and remain at sea regarding the great areas west of the watershed.

Another big mistake lay in over representation of the city and the under representation of the man on the land. The producer should be the first care, and while he is woefully disregarded and ill-considered a country cannot thrive. The reason of this state of affairs was the division of electorates on a population basis. This meant that a city electorate covered a very small area, and that practically all its wants were attended by the municipality, so that the city member had leisure to ply the trade of merchant, doctor, or barrister within a few minutes of the house of parliament; whereas the country member, to become acquainted with the vast area he represented and the requirements of its inhabitants and attend parliamentary sittings, had no time left to be anything but a member of parliament, precariously depending upon re-election for a livelihood.

Dawn threw herself into the contest with great enthusiasm, and also industriously pursued her vocal studies, but for her was exceptionally subdued and inclined to be cross on the smallest provocation. She had become so engrossed in political meetings that "Dora" Eweword, who was continually at Clay's since the retreat of Ernest, one day remonstrated with her. She had made a political meeting the excuse for declining to go rowing with him, whereupon he remarked--

"Oh, leave 'em to the old maids, Dawn. You'll grow into a scarecrow that would frighten any man away if you hang on to politics much more."

"Well, if it would frighten _some_ men away, I'd go in for them twice as much," snapped the girl. "I suppose you admire the style of girls who are going around now saying, after some straightforward women have said what we all feel and got the vote, 'Oh, I don't care for the vote. Let men rule; they are the stronger vessel. Politics don't belong to women,' and so on. You'd think me a sweet little womanly dear if I croaked like that; but you keep your brightest eye on that sort of a squarker, and for all her noise about being content with her rights, you'll see that she takes more than her share of the good of the reforms that other women have worked for."

"Oh Lord!" good-temperedly giggled "Dora," for home truths that would be considered sheer spleen from a plain girl are taken as fine fun when uttered by a girl as physically attractive as Dawn.

During the second week of the footballer's absence, who should appear to lend a hand on the side of Leslie Walker but Mr Pornsch, _uncle_ of the late Miss Flipp. He arrived with the callousness worthy of a certain department of man's character, and addressed a meeting with as much pomp and self-confidence and talk of bettering the morals of the people, as though he had been an Ellice Hopkins. He had the further effrontery to visit Clay's and feign crocodile grief for the deplorable fate of his niece. He protested his shame and horror, together with a desire for revenge, so loudly that I resolved that he should not be disappointed, that the dead girl should be in a slight measure avenged, and he should not only know but feel it.

"I ain't got me voting paper. Me an' Carry will go up for 'em to-morrer," said grandma one evening from her arm-chair near the fireplace.

There had been the usual meeting, and Ada Grosvenor and others had called in to discuss it.

"Why, didn't the police deliver yours?" inquired Miss Grosvenor.

"No, we was missed somehow."

"Easy to see Danby wasn't on the racket of deliverin' electors' rights, or you would have had two or three apiece," Andrew chipped in.

"I'm going for Walker straight," announced grandma. "He's temperance at all events, and that is somethink w'en there ain't any common-sense in any of them."

"If I had twenty votes I wouldn't give one to that Walker," said Andrew. "All the women are after him because they think he's good-lookin', an' he's got bandy legs. They clap him like fury, and look round like as they'd eat any one that goes to ask him a question. They seem to reckon he's an angel that oughtn't to be asked nothink he can't answer. I believe they'd all kiss him an' marry him if they could. I hate him. Vote for Henderson, he wouldn't give the women a vote, and only men are workin' on his committee."

"Oh my, what's this!" exclaimed Dawn.

"Well, you know, the women _are_ making fools of themselves about this Walker," said Ada Grosvenor, with her intelligently humorous laugh. "I don't think much of him myself. In spite of his choice phrasing of the usual hustings' bellowing, if women had not already the franchise he would be slow to admit them on a footing of equality with men as regards being. There are two extremes of men, you know. One thinks that woman's position in life is to act squaw to her lord and master. The other regards her as a toy--an article to be handed in and out of carriages like choice china--a drawing-room ornament, to be decked in wonderful gowns, and whose whole philosophy of existence should be to add to the material delight of men. Walker is a representative of the latter type, and old Hollis, who thinks that monkeys have as good a right to vote as women, belongs to the other. At a surface glance their views regarding women seem to be diametrically opposed, but to me it has always appeared that they equally serve the purpose of degrading the position of women. You should have seen how cruel Walker looked to-night when an old man asked if he approved of women entering the senate. He said _no_ like a clap of thunder."

It was probably this perspicacity on the part of Ada Grosvenor, coupled with a sense of humour, that earned for her the reputation of "trying to ape the swells."

"Well, good-night everybody, and, Mrs Clay, don't forget to apply for your right in time, or you won't be able to vote," she said in parting.

"No fear," responded grandma. "I've not been counted among mad people an' criminals, an' done out of me simple rights till this time of life without appreciatin' 'em w'en I've got 'em at last."

Next day, true to intention, the old dame and Carry went up town for their "voting papers," and to repeat the former's words, "was downright insulted, so to speak."

The civil servant whose duty it was to give rights to those electors who were not already in possession of such, was carrying affairs with a high hand, and had the brazen effrontery to tell Grandma Clay that it was a disgrace to see a woman of her years "running after a vote," as he elegantly expressed it; and he also suggested to Carry that it would suit her better to be at home doing her housework, and to put the cap on his gross misconduct, he persuaded them that they had left it too late to obtain the coveted document, the first outward and visible proof that men considered their women complete rational beings.

Carry had retorted that it would suit him better to do the work he was paid for than to exhibit his ignorance in meddling with the private affairs of others, and that if he could discharge his duties as well as she did her housework, he wouldn't make an ass of himself by showing his fangs about women having the vote in the way he did.

The two electresses thus bluffed came down the street and told their grievance to Mr Oscar Lawyer, for the nonce head of the Opposition League, and at ordinary seasons a father of his people, to whom all the town made in times of necessity,--whether it was an old beldame requiring assistance from the Benevolent Society or a lad seeking a situation and requiring a testimonial of character.

With Mr Oscar Lawyer they also ran upon Mr Pornsch; and it was discovered that the churlish clerk's statement was utterly false, and made because he was on the side of Henderson and these two women were not. There was more talk than there is space for here, but the upshot of it was the clerk was routed, and grandma and Carry came home triumphantly, each in possession of one of the magic sheets of blue paper, which they spread out on the table for us all to see.

"Well, well!" said grandma, "I seen the convicts flogged in days w'en this was nothink but a colony to ship them to, and I drove coaches w'en the line was only as far out of Sydney as here; and to think I should have lived to see the last of the convicts gone, coaches nearly become a novelty of the past, us callin' ourselves a nation, an' here a paper in me hand to show I can vote a man into this parliament and the other that the king's son hisself come out to open. I'm glad to see us lived that we can have our say in the laws now same as the men, and not have to swaller anythink they liked to put upon us to soot theirselves," and the old dame, with a splendid light in her eye, rubbed the creases out of the paper and spread it out again.

"Pooh, it's the same as we've had all along. You didn't think a elector's right was anythink to be grinnin' at w'en the men had it. I never seen you gapin' at mine; you'd think it was somethink wonderful now when you've got one of your own," said Uncle Jake, coming in.

"Well, I never! Jake Sorrel! Of course we don't think much of other people's things! What is the good of another woman's baby or husband or _frying-pan_, that is, if it was equally a thing you couldn't borrer? And if you was blind, what pleasure would you get out of some one else seein' the blue sky, or warnin' that there was a snake there to be trod on, an' that's what it's been like with the elector's rights."

"Well, but what difference does that bit of paper make to you now? You won't live no longer nor find your appetite no better, an' it won't pay the taxes for you," contended uncle.

"Then if it is of so little account, why does it gruel you so much to see me with it? An' little as it is, there ain't that paper's reason why we shouldn't have always voted; and little though it is, that's all the difference has stood all these years between men voting and women not; and little as you think it is for a woman to have done without, it's what men would shed their blood for if _they_ was done out of it. It ain't what things actually are, it's all they stand for," and grandma gathered up her _right_ and went to take off her bonnet and change the bristling black dress which she donned for public appearance.

I sat musing while she was away. "It ain't what things actually are, it's all they stand for," as the old dame had said; and her delight in being a freed citizen, no longer ranked with criminals and lunatics, had touched my higher self more profoundly than anything had had power to do for years.

Though taking a vivid interest in the electioneering, owing to the large distillation of the essence of human nature it afforded, as neither of the candidates had a practical grip of public business, I cared not which should poll highest; but now I resolved to procure my right and go to the ballot, and, if nothing more, make an informal vote _for the sake of all that it stood for_.

At back of the simple paper were arrayed the spirits of countless noble and fearless men and women who had so loved justice and their fellows that they had spent their lives in working for this betterment of the conditions of living, and the little paper further stood for an improvement in the position of women, and consequently of all humanity, inconceivable to cursory observation.

As for a woman going to the poll and voting for Jones or Smith, that was harmless in either case, and would not help her live or die or pay her debts, as Uncle Jake expressed it; but excepting the female vote for the House of Keys in the Isle of Man, the enfranchisement of women, spreading from one to the other of the Australian States, represented the first time that woman, even in our vauntedly great and highly civilised British Empire, was constitutionally, statutably recognised as a human being,--equal with her brothers. That women shall compete equally with men in the utilitarian industrialism of every walk of life is not the ultimate ideal of universal adult franchise. Such emancipation is sought as the most condensed and direct method of abolishing the female sex disability which in time shall bring the human intelligence, regardless of sex, to an understanding of the superiority of the mother sex as it concerns the race--as it is the race, the whole race, and consequently worthy of a status in life where it shall neither have to battle at the polls for its rights nor be sold in the market-place for bread.

The empty-headed cannot be expected to perceive the magnitude of this upward step in the evolution of man, and its machinery may not run smoothly for a span; we nor our children's children may not know much benefit from what it symbolises, but shall we who are comfortable in rights wrested from ignorance and prejudice but never enjoyed by past generations, be too selfish and small to rejoice in the possibility of bettered conditions those ahead may live under as the fruits of the self-sacrificing labour of those now fighting for their ideals?

NO!

TWENTY-ONE.

THINGS GO MORE WRONG.

Grandma could think of nothing but the clerk's insult when she had gone for her electoral right.

"Him! that thing! What's he employed for but to do this work, and if he ain't prepared to do it decent, why don't he give up an' let a better man in his place? They're easy to be got. 'Runnin' after a vote,' indeed! But that's where I made me big mistake. I should have stayed at home and writ to him, an' he'd have been compelled to send the police with it. That's what I ought to have done, an' let me servants that I'm taxed to keep do the work they're dying for want of, instead of doin' it meself; but at any rate I got me right safe an' sure," she said with satisfaction. "A long time we'd be getting them if all men was like him, which, thank God, they ain't. But that's the way with all these fellers in a Government job; they think they're Lord Muck, and too good to speak to the folk that's keeping them there, and only for which they wouldn't be there at all. Only for Oscar Lawyer and Mr Pornsch--and Dawn, where are you? Mr Pornsch was very nice to me, an' I asked him to tea, an' to come down for some of them little things belongin' to his niece. He's very cut up about her."

"Yes, about as cut up about her as Uncle Jake would be over me."

"Now, Dawn, how do you know?" severely inquired the old dame.

"I know very well that old men with his delightful slenderness of figure, and men who have drunk all the champagne and other poison it must have taken to colour his nose that way, haven't got much true feeling left, except for a bottle of wine, and a feed of something high and well seasoned."

However, Mr Pornsch presently arrived, and illustrated by his smickering at Dawn that notwithstanding his grief for a dead girl he yet retained an eye for the charms of a living one. It also transpired that he would not have waited for an invitation to call upon us.

This sweet bachelor champion of Women's Protection Bills, who had so long deprived some woman of the felicity of being his wife, had apparently determined to hastily repair the omission, and it soon became evident that he meant to honour no less a person than Dawn in this connection--Dawn! a princess in her own right, by reason of her health, her beauty, her youth, and her honest maidenhood!

He took Ernest's place in going to Sydney with her, thrust costly trifles upon her; he was fifty-five if he were a day, and a repulsive debauchee at that. Dawn, so healthy and wholesome, loathed him. She sat on her bed at night with her dainty toes on the floor, and raved while she combed her fine-spun brown hair. I let her rave, believing this a good antidote for the worry of that dish of water that was rarely out of her thoughts. I knew that she never omitted to scan the football news in hopes of seeing the doings of a certain red-headed player recorded there, and I also knew that she was doomed to disappointment, unless she could connect R. E. Breslaw with R. Ernest of the wash-up water incident.

A man of Pornsch's calibre is hard to abash, or Dawn would have abashed him, but failing to do so, at last she came to me requesting that I should assist her to get rid of him.

"I don't want to complain to grandma," said she. "It might get abroad if she took it in hand, so I'd like to choke him off myself if I could. I have enough to suffer already;" and I knew she was again thinking of that fatal dish of water, and how "Dora" Eweword twitted her concerning it.

Then I took Dawn on my knee as it were, and told her a story. It was such a painful story that I first extracted from her a solemn promise that she would not make a fuss of any sort, for this young woman lacked restraint--that command over her emotions which, if carefully adjusted and gauged, will make the work of a talented artist pass for genius, and that of a genius pass for the work of a god.

When his connection with the ill-fated young girl, who had slipped out in the dead of night to throw herself in the gently gliding Noonoon, became known to Dawn, I was afraid her horror would so betray her that any subsequent plans for the punishment of the miscreant might fall through.

"I'll knock him down with the poker next time he comes. I'll throw a kettle of boiling water on him as sure as eggs are eggs. Fancy the reptile leering around me: I felt nearly poisoned as it was, but I didn't know he was a murderer as well! Oh, the hide of him to come here! I really will throw boiling water on him!"

Dawn continued in this strain for some time, but as she quieted down became possessed of a notion to tar and feather him in the manner mentioned by her grandmother in one of her anecdotes. Carry and I were to be called upon to assist in this ceremony, which was to take place upon the return of Mr Pornsch. For the present he had disappeared to attend to some business.

In the interim, the meetings continued without a break, and Dawn unremittingly looked for the football news, now with the war crowded into a far corner, by the special complexion that each daily chose to put on political affairs.

"Just look up the football news," I said one day, "and see how my friend Ernest is doing."

"He made a lot of goals as 'forward' in the last match. See!" she coolly replied, putting her tapering forefinger on the name of R. E. Breslaw, as she handed me the paper.

"Did he tell you he wanted to disguise his identity while here?"

"Yes; he told me all about it one day when we went to Sydney," she replied, leaving me wondering what else they might have confided during these jaunts.

Now that we required his presence Mr Pornsch was not in evidence, and neither was anything to be heard of the red-headed footballer's reappearance, though he had been absent four weeks, and this brought us towards the end of June. At this date there appeared a paragraph stating that Breslaw and several other amateur sportsmen were contemplating a tour of America, to include the St Louis Exposition.

That night some one besides myself heard the roar of the passing locomotives, but she did not confess the cause of her sleeplessness. It was one of those irritations one cannot tell, so she let off her irritation in other channels.

Matters did not brighten as the days went on. Two nights after Ernest's reported departure for the States, "Dora" Eweword brought Dawn home from Walker's committee meeting, and remained talking to her in the otherwise deserted dining-room till a late hour. As soon as he left Dawn came upstairs, and throwing herself face downwards on her bed burst into violent weeping.

"What has come to you lately, Dawn?" I inquired. "Tell me what sort of a twist you have put in your affairs so that I may be able to help you."

"No one can help me," she crossly replied.

"Don't you think that I was once young, and have suffered all these worries too? It is not so long since I was your age that I have forgotten what may torment a girl's heart."

Thus abjured she presently made me her father-confessor.

Eweword it appeared had grown very pressing, and her grandma had urged her to accept him as the best of her admirers. The old dame had not observed the trend of matters with Ernest. In a house where week-end boarders came and went, and the landlady had a pretty granddaughter, there were strings of ardent admirers who came and went like the weeks, and in all probability transferred their week-end affections as frequently and with as great pleasure as they did their person, and the old lady was too sensible to place any reliance in their earnestness, while Dawn too was very level-headed in the matter. Thus Ernest, if considered anything more than my friend, would have merely been placed in the week-end category. The old lady, not feeling so vigorous as usual, was anxious to have Dawn settled, and had tried to put a spoke in "Dora" Eweword's wheel by threatening Dawn with deprivation of her coveted singing lessons did she not receive him favourably. Dawn in a fit of the blues, probably brought on by seeing the announcement of Ernest's departure, had accepted Eweword conditionally. The conditions were that he should wait two years and keep the engagement entirely secret, and she had promised her grandma that she would think of marriage with him at the end of that time, provided her vocal studies should be continued till then.

"That's the way I'll keep grandma agreeable to pay for the lessons, and in that time, do you think, I'll be able to go on the stage and do what I like and be somebody?" asked the girl from out the depths of her inexperience.

"And what of '_Dora_'?"

"He can go back to Dora Cowper then. I'll tell him I was only 'pulling his leg,' like he said about her. It will do him good."

"You might break his heart," I said with mock compassion.

"Break his heart! _His_ heart! He's got the sort of heart to be compensated by a good plate of roast-beef and plum-pudding--like a good many more!"

"Will he consent to this?"

"He'll have to or do the other thing; he can please himself which. I don't care a hang. He said that if I would marry him soon he would let me continue the singing lessons and get me a lovely piano,--all the soft-soap men always give a girl beforehand. I wonder did he think me one of the folks who would swallow it? Couldn't I see as soon as I was married all the privileges I would get would be to settle down and drudge all the time till I was broken down and telling the same hair-lifting tales against marriage as aired by every other married woman one meets;" and Dawn, her cheeks flushed and her white teeth gleaming between her pretty lips, looked the personification of furious irritation.

"All I care for now is to get the singing lessons, as long as I don't have to do anything too bad to get them."

I suddenly turned on her and asked--

"Honestly, why did you throw that dish of water on Ernest Breslaw?" Thus unexpectedly attacked, her answer slipped out before she had time to prevaricate.

"Because I was a mad-headed silly fool--the biggest idiot that ever walked. That's why I did it!"

"Do you know that it hurt him very, very keenly?"

No answer.

"Do you know that he cared more for you than he understood himself?"

No answer.

"Dawn, do _you_ care?"

"Not in that way; but oh, I care terribly that I made such a fool of myself. Had it been any one else it wouldn't have mattered, but he will think I did it because I was an ignorant commoner who knew no better. That's what stings; but I'm not going to think any more of it. I'm going to give my life up to singing, and it doesn't matter. I suppose I'll never see him again, and he'll never know but that I did it out of ignorance."

I smiled at the despondence in her tone as I extinguished the kerosene lamp-light.

There is a stage in the course of most love affairs when the knight is despised and rejected by the lady, when the sun and the salt of life depart, and he finds no more pleasure in it; when he is seized with an irresistible desire to go forth in the world and by his prowess dazzle all mankind for the purpose of attracting one pair of eyes. The same occurs to the lady, and she determines to make all men fall at her feet by way of illustrating to one adamantine heart that he was a dullard to have passed over her charms. And this young lady of the rose and lily complexion, and knight of the bright-hued locks and herculean muscles, being young--sufficiently young to be downcast by imaginary stumbling-blocks--had reached it. Goosey-gander knight! Gander-goosey lady!

I smiled again, for in my pocket was a letter that morning received from the former himself, stating that he had been booked for a trip to the St Louis Exposition, but had flung it up at the last moment in favour of seeing how Les. got on at the election, and that he would be back in Noonoon before polling-day. Considering he could have seen how the election progressed equally as well in Sydney as Noonoon, and that to see how his step-brother polled, when he took little interest in politics, had grown preferable to a trip to America, quite contented me regarding the probable termination of affairs.

However, I did not show this letter, as in matchmaking, like in good cooking, things have to be done to the turn, and this was not the opportune turn.

"Oh, well," I said, "so long as you don't let your little arrangement get abroad, I don't expect it will harm Eweword."

"No fear of it getting abroad. I've threatened him if it does that a contradiction that will be true will also get abroad by being put in the 'Noonoon Advertiser.'"

Next night, however, I found Dawn stamping on something glittering that spread about the floor, and by inquiry elicited--

"That infernal 'Dora' Eweword has had the cheek to give me a ring, and that's what I've done with it, and that's all the hope he has of ever marrying me," she exclaimed, bringing the heel of her high-arched foot another thump on the fragments.

"He's a bit too quick with his signs and badges of slavery. He's so complacent with himself, and thinks he's ousted the 'red-headed mug' as he calls him, that I hate him."

"He has a right to be complacent. You have given him reason to be. He has won you, so you have told him, and he believes you."

"Yes, I know, and it makes me all the madder to think of it."

I suppressed a chuckle; even before attaining my teens I had never been so splendidly, autocratically _young_ as this beautiful high-spirited creature!

"Let things settle awhile, and then we'll pour them off the dregs," I advised.

TWENTY-TWO.

"O Spirit, and the Nine Angels who watch us,
And Thy Son, and Mary Virgin,
Heal us of the wrong of man."

Outside politics the next item of interest on the Clay programme was the reappearance of Mr Pornsch, who came for afternoon tea, during which he invited himself to evening tea later on, and before it took Dawn's time in the drawing-room trying some late songs. Dawn averred that it was with difficulty she had restrained from setting fire to him or attacking him with the piano-stool.

He got so far with his "love-making" on this occasion that he had asked Dawn to take a little walk with him, which she had readily consented to do, as it would enable her to entrap him for the tarring-and-feathering upon which she had determined.

"He is going to meet me over among the grapes in the shade of the osage breakwind. Do you think we will be able to manage him? Let us be sure to have everything well arranged," whispered Dawn to me as we came to evening tea.

Near the appointed time of tryst, when the first division of the Western mail was roaring by--the warm red lights from its windows shedding a glow by the viaduct--she and I betook ourselves to the far end of Grandma Clay's vineyard, where we were securely screened by the osage orange hedge on one side and the grape-canes and their stakes on the other. Dawn carried a two-pound treacle-tin filled with tar, and which had been sitting on the end of the stove during the afternoon to melt into working order. Carry, who had entered into the affair with vim, had her share of the arrangements in readiness, and was secreted nearer the house to act as sentinel, and to run to our assistance if summoned by a prearranged whistle.

Dawn placed me and the superannuated hair broom, with which she had armed me, behind a grape-vine, and herself took up a position before it and beside a hole about eighteen inches deep and two feet square which she had excavated.

Mr Pornsch was soon to be heard tripping and blundering along, while the starlight, to which our eyes had grown accustomed, showed the river where the dead girl whom we were there to avenge had ended her miserable existence.

"Dawn, my pet, where are you? Curse the grape-vines," he gasped.

"I'm here, _uncle darling_," she responded, the two last words under her breath.

Directed by her voice, he neared till we could discern his bulk.

"My little queen," he exclaimed, the tone of his voice betraying that which defiled the crisp glory of the night for as far as it carried.

"Just wait a minute till I see where we are," said Dawn, "or we will be getting all tangled up in these canes."

With this she started back, causing him to do likewise, and drawing a swab on a stick from the pot in her hand, she brought a consignment of the black sticky tar a resounding smack on his face, and following it with others thick and fast, exclaimed--

"There! There! That's all for you!"

Mr Pornsch naturally stepped backwards into the excavation, as designed, and sat down as completely and largely helplessly as one of his figure could be counted upon to do, and coming to Dawn's assistance I planted the broom on his chest, and bore with my feeble strength upon him. It was quite sufficient to detain him, seeing he was now stretched on the broad of his back with his amidship departments foundered in two feet of indentation.

Dawn thoroughly plastered his face and head, and in spitting to keep his mouth clear he lost his false teeth. He attempted to bellow, but jabbing his mouth full Dawn soon cowed him into quietude.

"Shut up, you old fool; if you make a noise we have six more girls waiting in a boat to fling you in the river and drag you up and down for a while tied on to a rope like a porpoise. Do you think you'll float?"

This had the desired effect, though he spluttered a little.

"What is the meaning of this? Have you all gone mad? I met you here at your own request to speak about helping you with your singing, and you've evidently put a wicked construction on my action. I demand a full explanation and an abject apology."

"Well," said Dawn, punctuating her remarks with little dabs of the tar, "the explanation is that we're doing this to show what we think of a murderer. Even if Miss Flipp had not drowned herself, but had lived to be an outcast, you would be still a murderer of her soul."

"What's this?" he blustered.

"We have several witnesses ready to give evidence regarding all that passed between you and the unfortunate girl supposed to be your niece during your midnight calls upon her," I interposed, speaking for the first time, "so bluff or pretence of any kind on your part is unavailing. Remain silent and hear what we intend to say."

"We're dealing with this case privately," continued Dawn, "because the laws are not fixed up yet to deal with it publicly. Old alligators--one couldn't call you men, and it's enough to make decent men squirm that you should be at large and be called by the same name--can act like you and yet be considered respectable, but this is to show you what _decent_ women think of your likes, and their spirits are with us in armies to-night in what we are doing. They'd all like to be giving your sort a wipe from the tar-pot, and then if you were set alight it would not be half sufficient punishment for your crimes. We haven't a law to squash you yet, but soon as we can we'll make one that the likes of you shall be publicly tarred and feathered by those made outcasts by the system of morality you patronise," vehemently said this ardent and practical young social reformer, who was more rabid than a veteran temperance advocate in fighting for her ideal of social purity.

There was silence a moment while we listened to ascertain was there any likelihood of our being disturbed, but the only man-made sounds breaking the noisy crickets' chorus were the rumble of vehicles along the highroad and the shunting of the engines at the station, so I chimed in with promised support.

"Yes, good women have to continually suffer the degradation of your type in all life's most sacred relations. They have to endure you at their board and in their homes, and leering at their sweet young daughters; and, alack! many in shame and humiliation own your stamp as their father or the father of their sons and daughters. They have had to endure it with a smile and hear it bolstered up as right, but those whose moral illumination has taken place would be with us in armies to-night if they could."

"I'm dying to give him a piece of my mind," said Carry, coming up.

"How do you like our little illustration of what we think of you? We've done it out of a long smouldering resentment against your reign, and this is a species of jubilation to find that the majority of Australian men are with us, because in the vote they have furnished us with a means of redress," and Carry finished her previously prepared speech by throwing a clod of dirt on him.

"My grey hairs should have protected me," he muttered.

"You mean they should have protected Miss Flipp," said Dawn, "and when a man with grey hairs carries on like this the crime is twice as deadly. There was nothing about grey hairs when you used a lead comb and got yourself up to kill. I thought you didn't want to make an especial feature of them, and that's why I'm dyeing them this beautiful treacley black. They'll look bosker when I'm done."

"Get up out of that, lest I'm tempted to do you a permanent injury," I said, taking the broom off him.

"You can go to the stable," said Dawn, "and I hope you won't contaminate it. Carry has a lantern and some grease and hot water, so you can clean yourself there and put on your overcoat. Never let us hear of you on a platform spouting about moral bills again unless you say it is on account of the practical experience you've had of the need of them to save weak and foolish young women from the clutches of such as you."

Mr Pornsch arose with difficulty while Dawn struck matches to see what he was like, and a more deplorably ludicrous spectacle never could be seen in a pantomime. The only pity of it was that it was not a punishment more frequently meted out to the sinners of his degree. He raved and stuttered how he would move in the matter, but Dawn, who had a commendable fearlessness in carrying out her undertakings, only laughed merry little peals, and told him the best way for him to move in the tar was towards the stable, and the best way to move out of it was by the aid of grease, soap, hot water, and soda. The expression of his eyes rolling and glaring amid the black was quite eerie, but eventually we reached the stable, where Carry instructed him how to clean himself, while Dawn jeered at him during the operation.

Having cleaned his face somewhat, he hid his neck and clothes in his overcoat which Carry handed, put on his hat, muffled his face in his handkerchief, and went away, Dawn administering a parting shot.

"Now, Uncle Pornsch, dear, next time you go ogling and leering round a _decent_ girl, remember, though she may be so situated that she has to endure you, yet she feels just as we do, that is, if she is a decent girl, whose eyes have been opened to the facts of life."

"I feel better than I have done for a long time," she concluded, as bearing the implements used in the adventure we three, who had agreed upon secrecy, made towards the house.

"So do I," said Carry. "If we could only do it to all who deserve the like, it would be grand!"

TWENTY-THREE.

UNIVERSAL ADULT SUFFRAGE.