I abhorred the deadliness of peace, and was hankering for joy. The Salvation Army thumping tin cans and wearing ugly bonnets and roaring about being saved in such an unladylike way had too much of a corner on salvation to leave it any glamour.

One of the last to appear was the tickling Canon. Ma welcomed him and handed him the Melbourne paper, remarking that he might be interested to see what interest was taken in her daughter in England. Ma said she was surprised that he had been so dilatory—dilatory mind you, but Ma is no vassal—in coming to see Sybylla. No wonder the church was losing its influence when a young girl had to depend on the sympathy of other pastors than her own. She neatly mentioned the names of Father O’Toole and other educated odds and ends. I withdrew so as not to explode with pleased surprise. Fancy Ma!

The Canon was not at all haw-haw when I came in again. Softened by Ma’s support, I sat as demurely as a mopoke. He congratulated me. I thanked him. After a while he recovered slightly and said, “You can’t expect me to agree with you in toto.” (I could not find this in the dictionary, but it sounded like Trilby’s “altogether” in ideas.) Ma invited the Canon to lunch, but he had promised to return to the Ollivers. Selah!

Other callers were tanned men all the way from the Cooper or the Paroo to bring me souvenirs or to shake the hand that had penned the book. Others wrote from Riverina and Out Back that they had met a man who had seen me. There were many whom I had never seen who gained notice by meeting me in places I had never been. Many others claimed relationship which did not exist. I was for ever hearing of cousins from Cape York to the Leeuwin—cousins in their own imagination. My real cousins, with a few exceptions, from Cape Otway to Charters Towers, maintained social superiority by deploring me as unworthy of the family progeniture. Inconsistently the people who had intended to turn their backs on me to illustrate my inferiority now reversed to attest their equality. The girls now said they did not mind how high I went, because I was not conceited and had never put on the slightest side. Pa, through EXPERIENCE, had predicted this.

The queerest characters thought they were my twin souls, and without having read my book. A far-flung tribulation of girls claimed me as their other self. People not near enough to feel caricatured loved my outburst because it was “just like ourselves”. They thanked me for my pluck and ability. I had given them all a lead in letting-go in egotism, and they found it a boon. My shrieks of discontent necessarily being crude and unformulated, and my fellows of all ages and no attainments, so to speak, also being crude and unformulated, or having been crude and young and unformulated, found me an affinity. Egotism can conceive no higher compliment.