The days were goldenly long and warm, I was rabid for mental and physical action, and there was none in that state of discontent in which it had pleased God to place me. It makes me question His amiability in placing His victims. In addition to riding I swam in our weedy water-holes among leeches and turtles where there was also an occasional snake, but of mental pabulum there was no crumb to be found, except in books. I was a voracious reader, but after all, books pall on one when that one is throbbing to be doing something exciting. From ’Possum Gully to Spring Hill and round about to Wallaroo Plains there wasn’t a real companion of my own age, nor any other age. The dissatisfaction of other girls stopped short at wondering why life should be so much less satisfactory to them than to their brothers, but they accepted it as the will of God. None of them was consumed with the idea of changing the world.

The idea of writing a book to make fun of the other books grew with cossetting. Ma said she had sufficient experience of my ideas to be chary of them. EXPERIENCE seems to stand by Ma like a religion.

Pa rubbed the top of his head contemplatively and said, “If you are man enough to write a book, I’ll get you some paper.”

“How could an untried girl write a book?” demanded Ma. “Why not start with a little story for the ‘Children’s Corner’? You can’t run before you learn to walk.”

CHAPTER FOUR.

“SATAN FINDS SOME MISCHIEF STILL.”

A ream of paper is a large quantity to one who has never written a book nor met anyone who has done so—480 sheets all to myself.

“That’ll hold you for a bit,” said Pa.

“What a waste!” said Ma.

The pleasure of good penmanship on all that lovely white paper edged me on to begin upon my spontaneous career of slinging ink, of which this volume is to be the petite finale.

Ma admired classical features. Pa had them. Perhaps that is what misled her into a poor match, and why, no matter how often my looks are praised as lovely, she will not rank me as a beauty. She says such talk is to make a fool of me. So to be done with the uncertainty, I accept Ma’s dictum that beauty lies in actions, and as my actions are all wrong, where could be my beauty? Nevertheless, bang went another convention. Men cared only for prettiness in girls, yet our house was a rendezvous for young men from all over the electorate and beyond it, who did not honestly come to talk politics with Pa, though they pretended that they did. I wasn’t in danger of being embittered by a lack of admirers, nor of platonic men friends, as I was simple enough to think they were at the start. They teased me about dropping the Premiership and taking to writing.