There was a dismal letter from home awaiting me at Geebung Villa. Pa’s sciatica, Ma’s rheumatism, the rain gauge and every sign combined could not bring rain to the Southern District. It was in a ghastly state. Even the curlews were puzzled and the new moon unreliable. The rabbits, however, flourished unabatingly. Pa had been laying phosphorus baits and had got too many whiffs and was not well. Ma said I was needed at home to look after things.

It was time for me to go in any case. Otherwise I should lose my excursion ticket, and we had no money for an extra fare. I wrote to catch the mail to ‘Possum Gully, stating when I should be in Goulburn. I had two more days in Sydney.

There was also a letter from Big Ears telling me he was going over the Gap if I continued to spurn his undying love. This scared me stiff. There would be a dreadful scandal. I should be regarded as a murderer, and no one would have any sympathy for a girl so unsexed as to write books. I could not handle this alone. Mrs. Crasterton would not quite understand. I longed for a friend. Edmée was no good in that respect except for me to admire. It was all on my side. Her vanity would be upset that Big Ears had transferred his aberration. She might blame me for being underhand. I shrank from Derek’s ridicule. Zo?, I felt, would be a tower of strength, but she had gone to Brisbane for a holiday.

Dear old Gaddy! He would understand. He would not lecture me about the way I did not want to go. I was ashamed that I had not appreciated Gaddy until this moment. He had given the blue sash in such a way that I could accept it. He had “shouted” all the plays and concerts that I had seen. Like Sister Anne on the parapet, or wherever she took up her stance, I had been looking for a knightly lover and had disregarded Gaddy because he had a double-chin and a girth like the mayor-and-corporation, and breathed so that I could always hear him if the conversation died down a little. He could not be idealised as a lover, but there had been more pestiferation than pleasure in lovers as known to me; and Gaddy’s person was formed to buttress friendship. I was famishing for a friend. When all is said and done, friendship is the only trustworthy fabric of the affections. So-called LOVE is a delirious inhuman state of mind: when hot it substitutes indulgence for fair play; when cold it is cruel, but friendship is warmth in cold, firm ground in a bog.

“Gaddy, come into the garden with me, like Maud,” I pled. “I love it and the Harbor so, but I’m not safe there without you.”

Gaddy always did what he was asked without fuss, and no one noticed how unselfish he was because he was fat and old. He waddled around the flower beds plucking me a masculine bouquet—a leafless mixture of bloom, short of stalks and tightly compressed, but it smelt of heaven.

I confessed my trouble with Big Ears, and Gaddy wanted to know could I not consider him. I said I’d rather earn my living as a nurse maid. “Well, then,” said Gaddy, “just don’t bother about him.”

“But supposing he should commit suicide!”

“I’ll tell Derek, he’ll knock sense into him.”

This brought relief mixed with fear of Derek’s ridicule. I then told Gaddy about the drought and Pa being ill, and that I had to go home. Gaddy said that that was no sort of a career for a girl like me. I said my literary career had entirely gone bung in Sydney. Gaddy wanted to know what this fellow Hardy had been doing to help me. “Is he putting you in a play or what? A fellow like that doesn’t waste his time without getting something out of it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, a little bird told me that a certain AUNT was away.”

So it seemed there were crows and magpies in Sydney as well as in the bush. “He wanted me to turn into someone that I am not, and go to London, but we have no money for that.”

Gaddy snorted and walked about a bit. “It’s a shame,” he said. “You need a patron, who would let you be yourself, and then you would have a brilliant career. Or you should have some cushy job with plenty of cash and leisure: but those jobs are given to men with influence. It would never do to let women have them, or where would men get wives?” He said this with a grin which extracted the sting.

Things would be righted now that women had the vote, but it would not be in time to help me, and I had not the necessary education. Gaddy breathed around the drive a bit and then we sat on the sea wall and he said, “There is a way that it could be settled as tight as a trivet.”

“Tell me how?” I demanded eagerly. Gaddy looked strange, even apoplectic, and his eyes bulged as if he were twisting his squint straight to look at me.

When a woman has warning she can obviate the conventional fable that a man stutters or mutters about loving her more than life or a good dinner, and which necessitates the companion fibs about being unworthy of his love combined with humble thanks for the honour he has offered her in the opportunity to be his wife, likewise drudge, echo, unfailing flatterer and so on. I had no warning from Gaddy. He said that I needed time and leisure to develop my kind of genius, and as he had plenty of money for the job, and loved me better than all the flash and selfish exploiters of my youth and beauty put together were capable of doing, what about solving my problem and making him as proud and happy as a pup with two tails by becoming Mrs. Gad.

It was a disgracefully crude thing to have done, but I put my fingers in my ears and fled to my room. No firm ground anywhere. “Oh, Gaddy, Gad!” I said in my grief. “How could you betray me so? How could you?” To lean on FRIENDSHIP and find treacherous AMOUR in its sheep’s wool! Old Grayling and Henry Beauchamp at ‘Possum Gully, and Big Ears and Gaddy in Sydney. My career had certainly gone bung at both ends and in the middle. Kerplunk! Bang!

I sat in the dusk and suffered my plight. Mrs. Crasterton might think that I had led her brother astray. I folded the blue sash and put it on Gaddy’s desk and continued to sit in the dark. I had recently read an article about men with gooseberry eyes and big girths making splendid husbands, but that girls passed them over to throw themselves under the feet of the man who would make their lives a misery because he could grace a dress suit and top hat. Gad and Goring. Goring had none of Gad’s unselfish generosity. Gaddy might even be noble, yet so powerful is appearance that the phrases of AMOUR would have GLAMOUR from Goring while Gaddy was so fat that his protestations could be nothing but fatuous. Such are the stupid tricks that NATURE plays. I wonder why.

It was Mrs. Crasterton’s At Home night. Wheeler coiffured the ladies. I heard Gaddy come in and dress across the corridor. Derek called to his mother, “Who’s coming tonight?”

She named three members of the Cabinet, a university professor of note, an editor, several social nonentities, and the Chief justice.

“The usual rabble,” said Derek, “but I might look in to see the Chief.” Derek was designed for something brilliant in the law.

“That will be nice, darling,” cooed his mother. I sat and shrank and shrank in the dark and wished I were back at ‘Possum Gully. I was misplaced in SOCIETY. Think how Edmée carried off admirers! They all made a fool of me, but think how she made fools of them so that they were for ever muttering around town about her, and trying to make out that she pursued them.

I was worried about Big Ears, as no doubt Gaddy would now leave him on my hands.

Everybody went down. There was great asking where was I, and at length Mrs. Crasterton came and turned on the light and found me. I felt a terrible fool. I said everything had gone wrong. Poor old Pa was not well, and the drought terrible, and it was wicked to be in Sydney enjoying myself while Ma had been struggling at home. I was as bad as a man who went on the spree. I said that I had written of my departure.

Mrs. Crasterton was kind and consoling. I pled to go to bed, but she said that would be no way to get the best out of the opportunities that Ma had let me have, that I must come down and put my worries aside. Only amateurs of life let their set-backs be known. “I’ll send Wheeler to tie the sash. She is an artist with bows.”

I said if I appeared in the sash again it would seem as if I went to bed in it. Mrs. Crasterton said that helped my quaintness.

I had to go down to dinner. Gaddy ate a large meal. He did not seem to be abashed or upset, whereas my food stuck in my throat. “The old toad, to spoil friendship,” I kept thinking to myself. “The old toad!”

Derek was an exposition of style from his patent leather toes to his shining hair. He gurgled and chuckled and winked at me u............