Oh, my! what I brought upon myself! Mr. Wilting said that what he feared was true. I had the Australian cocksureness, was so crudely self-opinionated that I could never improve. The only thing to save me would be immediate transplantation to England, where I would find my level before my mind became set.

“But,” I persisted, becoming possessed of a devil, as Ma used to say, “why should everything English be our model just because it is English? Shouldn’t we do something on our own hook?”

“On our own hook!” he repeated with a shudder. “To quote some of your own doggerel-mongers,

* ‘But objects near the vision fill,
When one forgets the things afar;

A jam tin on the nearest hill

When touched by sunlight seems a star.”

“But that seems to be on your side,” I suggested.

“He has gropings. He’s not quite so cocksure.”

I had met Mr. Wilting’s mentality before. Plenty of it had penetrated to ’Possum Gully. Such people’s families found Australia a handy dumping-ground for their misfits and undesirables, but the silly dumpedees instead of having the spunk to help us natives do something on our own hook in Australianism, thought we should all imitate the English most lickspittlingly. Of course we are proud of our English heritage, than which, sad to say there is no better. By that I mean that it is depressing that it is the best that man has achieved at present, but hang it all, one is a bit of a crawler not to be something on one’s own hook. It’s a jolly good phrase, and we must achieve something better than servile imitation to be worthy of England and Shakespeare.

Mr. Wilting shook his head at me. Well he might, had he known what I really contained in the way of ideas: but with one part of myself I thought it most kind of him to stoop to me at all. At least he did not want to extirpate my idea of writing, he merely wanted to direct it and change its personality. I was grateful for this, but thought him rather a confisticated bore and an obsolete frump in his other strains. I ventured to ask if I could earn a few shillings like other people by writing articles. He said to be sure I could, I should write an article about my own views and send it to him. This filled me with hope.

Having eaten all the cakes and sandwiches which Mrs. Crasterton had left me to dispense so that this culture-engendering CONTACT might be undiluted, he took up his hat and stick and said, “You know nothing about love. Keep off the subject until you mature; though study will help you a little, and you’ll need practice. I hope to see a great improvement in your love-making next book: it is very crude in this one, very crude indeed.”

“It’s exactly the way men make love,” I maintained.

“That’s the reason it’s a failure as art—mere raw material—crude.” With this puzzling statement he clapped his hat crudely on his head shook my hand and departed.