I sent a copy to Old Harris. He wrote that it was surprising to see such a novel issuing from the stately house of McMurwood—this alone assured my status. “But my dear girl, I am troubled by the tenor of the book. Where is your radiance, your joyous sense of fun, your irrepressible high spirits? The pages seethe with discontents and pain. Have you been living alone in your spirit, suffering as we who had deepest affection for you did not dream? This distresses me. I cannot recognise you at all in these pages. Why not set our hearts at ease with a companion volume in which you give us your bright and illuminating self?”

Pa said Old Harris was a wonderful man. Ma said how was a man wonderful who had wasted all his opportunities. Pa said that Mr. Harris had understanding.

“Humph!” said Ma. “All men, and the older they grow the sillier they are, understand a young woman, but a mature mother of a family or an old woman burdened to the earth with real griefs and troubles—thrust upon her by other people—could drop under their feet without attention.”

Pa said that it was useless to quarrel with NATURE.

And that was the end of the book. We got on with the drought. It was a hummer that year and took all our attention.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

“THAT SYBYLLA!”

It wasn’t the end of the book after all. Because of the drought, and the horses being poor, visiting among the neighbours practically ceased, and it was some time before we knew what was going on. We were further like ostriches, because hard times had suspended our subscriptions to the papers.

Eusty went to Stony Flat—the neighboring community centring in a school—with the Stringybark Hill boys who were meeting in a picnic and football match, and he came home with a briar bush of gossip.

“Golly, Sybylla, you’ve done it this time, I reckon,” announced he. “Everybody is snake-headed about your blooming old book.”

“Where did they get it?” asked Ma. My heart missed a beat in dismay.

“Old Foxall can’t keep enough on hand. They must have printed dozens more than those you had. Golly, I’m glad I’m not you. All the old blokes despise you and laugh at the idea of you trying to write a book.”

“That reminds me,” said Pa. “The other day when I went over to Blackshaw, he got as red in the face as if he had been popping his brand on my sheep, and hid a book behind his back. I knew what it was, as he never read another book in his life, I’ll swear. Poor old chap, he apologised and said he would put it on the fire, that he only got it to see if it was as wicked as people were saying. At any rate, my girl, you’ve made people read a book for the first time in their lives.”

“What did you say?” inquired Ma.

“I told him that a marvellous thing had happened in our midst, and they were too ignorant to know it. Then he got squiffy and thanked God that his daughters were different. It appears that the Wesleyan preacher last Sunday denounced you. He said that ycur attitude towards religion damns you.”