“Pillaloo!” grinned Pa. “He’s kept in hobbles now. The flash buggy has disappeared.” His daughters had come to see Pa and Ma specially to apologise for the old man’s dementia. Silly old toad had made such a noise that it was one of the jokes of the district by now!

Horrors!

Our stoical land suffered, and we and the animals with it. The year ran down to harvest, a poor pinched harvest, but sufficient for the few remaining animals. I received a cheque for my little book. The first instalment of three-pences had totted up to one hundred pounds. It was a lot of money to us. It saved us that year. There was also an editor on one of the big dailies who encouraged me to write prose sketches, and by these I sometimes made twenty-five shillings a week. He was gentle and kind and kept watch with his blue pencil against any originality that would have got me into trouble. At first I nearly sank through the boards because of the sentences he cut out—always those I had prized as my own discoveries. That they were deleted showed that I must be lacking in good form, but intuition quickly taught me what was acceptable.

I was able to write these articles at odd moments, and struggled more diligently with housewifery to offset the delinquency of attempting to write. An author enjoyed no prestige in ’Possum Gully.

My rebellious discontent surged up more furiously than ever. I craved the pang and tang, the joys and struggles of life at the flood. I was willing to accept my share of tears and pains if I could have also some of the splendour and passion which were my temperamental right. Was all my power of emotion wrong?—something to be suppressed till it evaporated like youth itself—something ladled out to me for a span and passed on to another futile creature of an hour?

On being honest with myself I felt that any God set up, except by little Mr. David, was contrary to a sane conception of a just and omnipotent God worth the name of Creator. The rubbish about self-will, and wrongs being righted in some foggy heaven could not stand against even little Jimmy Dripping common sense. The voice of the wind urges the soul to deeper conceptions of spiritual wisdom. The magic in the wide sunlight cancels the trivial church image of a God fashioned on the pattern of an unprepossessing old man. The contentment preached by pastors and masters to the less fortunate in goods and opportunities sounds like an impudent assumption of betterism by those who are often in the worse collection of parasites. Why should Ma’s extraordinary skill and management, which enables her to excel a fashionable couturière and equal a chef and baker, be wasted, while poor old Lady Hobnob—to take one example—who cannot overcome B FLATS has a glorious mansion in a heavenly situation at Potts Point? Why should Pa, who had tried to help the struggling men by fearless and honest measures, have been robbed of his property while a vulgar old vulture like Sir James Hobnob, who had diverted to himself a fortune out of public funds, should have all the honours and be invited by the King to dine at Buckingham Palace and to sleep at Windsor Castle? I hated all the doctrines of ’Possum Gully and its want of works, but had given up saying so aloud.