*“Bulletin” Verse.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

A GREAT NAME IN AUSTRALIAN LITERATURE.

From that date I began to have more practice in love, or perhaps it was merely experience.

The following morning I posted my article to Mr. Wilting, then opened my mail. In it was a long letter from Big Ears. He told me that he loved me to distraction. Every day since I had come to town he had perched in a Moreton Bay fig in his grounds which overlooked our route to the ferry, to watch me go by. Would I, could I ever think of him? He would have patience for ten years if necessary. I was shocked. What would Edmée think—when she had been so kind to me! Fortunately she despised him, and was waiting for him to propose solely to dismiss him. With another section of myself I thought, Huh! if I put this down, Mr. Wilting would say I know nothing of how men make love.

I hadn’t time to think just then: the telephone rang and Mrs. Crasterton called me. “You had better hear the whole of this,” she said. “I find you are a wise young thing and seem to know more than those who are trying to instruct you.”

She handed me the second ear piece. Zoë de Vesey was speaking.

Now it appears that Australia has one great literary man, or that one great literary man was a native of Australia? He had been many years in London, had gone HOME on the Press Association but in London had had the opportunity to turn into a real man of letters. He was now one of the most successful playwrights of the day. His plays had record runs in London. Here was a comet with two tails when compared with the LOCAL CACKLERS. He made pots of money, Zoë said, but his expensive tastes kept ahead of his income. He went everywhere and was a social lion. And this great god had expressed the wish to see little me during his visit to his native land.

He had been born on the Northern Tableland as I on the Southern, but he had gone to the University and had swum about in SOCIETY since a tadpole, whereas I had simply been entitled to do so, but had been kept on the cockatoo level because of indigence.

At the time of the Diamond Jubilee he had won a prize for an ode entitled, Australia to England!, and became known as the Australian Swinburne. However, he had quickly renounced all Australian crudities and had written a novel of London entitled The Woman Who Wilted, one of the greatest circulating library successes, which had earned him the title of the Australian Anthony Hope.

“He doesn’t seem to be anything on his own hook”, thinks I to myself.

On going to London he had not stressed his Australian origin but played the game on London lines. He had outdone the Londoners in Londonness through having more of England known in knowing Australia too. His comedies of duchesses and high ladies who knew all about extracting the erotic excitement from amour, as Gaddy put it, were the last word in being risque without being bannable. He was a SUCCESS. He must be just reeking with EXPERIENCE, thinks I, drinking in this titillating news.