I was more demanding. I wanted someone who would understand. Who better than our greatest Australian author? I quite understood him since ever I was old enough to lisp a line of his ballads, what more sequential than his understanding of me? In the innocence of my heart, or it may have been the heartlessness of my innocence, I confidently sent him the manuscript. Having worshipped at his shrine with a whole-heartedness which we can enjoy but once in life, I felt sure of welcome within the gates of his interest.

In those days so entire was my unsophistication that I did not suspect that an author, even the AUSTRALIAN GREATEST, may not have earned thousands by his pen, and may be pestered by so many literary duds that he sees each fresh one draw near with weariness and terror.

To escape making a short story long, my idol welcomed my attempt with cheers for its ORIGINALITY, and asked would I trust him with the manuscript?

WOULD I ! ! ! ! !

I’d have given him any or all of my treasures, even my black-dappled-grey filly, a doll, a book of girls’ stories or a little box covered with velvet and sea shells. When I come to think of it, these were my only treasures, and he could not take the filly with him to London whither he was going. I was excited by his acceptance of the manuscript. I once gave Ma a little story for her birthday. She thanked me, but did not look as if it were an enjoyable present, and never said whether she read it before burning it under the copper. I hoped the great Australian writer would read my offering before burning it, as I had taken pains to write it nicely—no blots or scratchings-out.

CHAPTER FIVE.

FINISHING SCHOOL.

This matter of the autobiography settled with satisfaction, I regained my chronic distaste for the kind of life into which it had pleased God to stuff me. The entertainment of fashioning my characters and acting their parts gave me the idea of being an actress. Acting appeared to be the only avocation open to a girl who was not a musical genius nor trained in anything but domesticity. Heaven knows why I had such a notion, for I loathed hypocrisy, and in my circle, acting was another name for this. I had never seen a play nor a mummer, nor even read one—a play I mean—except Shakespeare’s. It must have been the delirium of day-dreaming. Fantasy.

My delirium escaped me one day and really startled poor Ma. We had a State child called Eustace to help about the place, or hinder, Ma said. He had once been an elephant’s leg in a school play in Goulburn and considered it a great lark. I concocted a scene, in which I was to accidentally fight a duel with him. He refused to fight unless I wore trousers. I put on Pa’s, but Eusty said Odds Fish, no dashing blade would fight with such a spectacle. So I tried a pair of Eusty’s in which I showed a bit of knee like a fat boy. Eusty called me Greedy Guts. We staged the drama in the hay shed. Pa was concerned that we might have set alight to the straw. Ma said never, never let her hear of me again putting on trousers; showing my person, failing in self-respect before a State School boy!