About Easter there was a bobbery in Lady Jane’s column. What do you guess? A SOCIETY WEDDING. A BEAUTY and a CONFIRMED BACHELOR. Most notable wedding of the year. OLD FAMILIES, SOCIETY, all were marshalled. Shower bouquets, a dozen bridesmaids—a big galanty show.

I laughed to picture Gaddy in the middle of bridal flutter. What would he do with his corporation—ah, what …

No; I did not envy Edmée her bridegroom. Quite the reverse. Nevertheless, I did seem a petty failure with my hands showing more glaringly than ever the effects of coarse manual toil, and my feet still unacquainted with silk stockings, while there was Edmée in satin and orange blossoms filling the newspapers with her success. I envied her her suitability to success, her disregard of consistency, her obliviousness of personal detractors.

I could not complain of lack of opportunities. I wondered how many other women Goring Hardy had practically kidnapped for a week just for their company and nothing but kisses—ardent but respectable? Yet I had not improved the shining hour.

I had fled from Gaddy in such a way that he had protected his vanity by pretending that his advances were spoof. In Big Ears, the catch of the previous season, I had discerned only a flap-eared weakling who stuttered prayers. He had offered to abrogate prayers until I was “saved”, but no, here I was back in ’Possum Gully and he not yet returned from a tour in Spain, and I had nought but a dream tho’ it ne’er came true.

Bung! Bung! Pop! Pop! went all respect for romance. Edmée could put Gaddy in the position of the romantic lover and affinity that she had gushed about. Gaddy, who had scoffed at Edmée, succumbed to her. Big Ears, who was going to commit suicide for love of me, forgot in a day. Marriage evidently was a piece of trading: one took the best animal procurable and got on with it. Ah, me! Oh, well!

I wrote things at odd times, things that I wanted to write, different from those I wrote to please the kind Editor, who was desirous of helping me with bread and butter. But nothing found favour with publishers or editors in Sydney or Melbourne. They said they expected something different from me. I gave thought to this, based upon their suggestions for acceptability. I deduced that I was different, and that they wanted me to be the same as all the others, to be one of the reigning school. Also they had stories from England. Their readers preferred English stories.

Well, so did I. I had had no notions about realistic Australianism until misdirected by old Harris. He had brought upon me all this trouble, this defeat. I wrote to ask him whither now?

I never had a reply. He was dead.

Any poor LOCAL CACKLERS who wrote to me and of which, with my OWN HOOK conceit, I was emphatically one, were assured that there was no hope for anyone in Australia. We must by hook or harpoon get away to THE BIG SMOKE.