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.”