Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land

p the Leichardt River from the sea, blew about the typed sheets on the table,

ed and was bundling them together, with a banana on each sheaf to keep it

nt was an odd combination of the Bush drawl grafted on to

ldea, except on busines

pen to be business because you're just the p

ong, clearing the rest of the garden pat

d Mrs Gil

t's going along the river,' he said. 'It's a good thing you kept

. and, as you say, I always FELT the old bird might want to fl

arch because we haven't had a proper rainy season, and I'll just st

d-brimmed Panama hat and mopped his forehead with a silk hand

oadening lower, high-bridged and with high cut nostrils, showing the sensitive red when he was enraged-as not infrequently happened. He had large honest blue eyes, intensely blue, of the fiery description with a trick of dropping the lids when he was in doubt or consideration. They were expressive

of spun silk, only coarser, and it would have curled at the ends had he not worn it close-cropped. His moustache and beard were rather deeper yellow, the beard short, well-shaped-the cut of Colin McKeith's beard was almost his only vanity-t

aight some cruel facts of human existance-to calculate at a glance the chances of death from a black's

distinguished him from the ordinary ruck of men-t

he littered wind-blown papers on the ta

etty fair show here of what

s look with one o

hat I wan

y" is not much in my line. Now if it had been yarding the fowls o

, and when the married couple had levanted and I'd got an incompetent black-gin in the kitch

at a time-h

tarantulas and centipedes and white lizards to clear out. I WAS a bu

gave a lit

e difference between a man and a woman. M

mining, pioneering-humping bluey along the track-stoney-broke: sold up b

a splendid man of you, Colin: and who would ever believe that you

ce for the sort of wife I

always. When you're rich enough you can put on a manager. You

re going in for Artesian bores. But it means capital, sinking wells three thousand feet and more. It'll be

or a wife? Aren't Austra

ou taught me that, Joan, I shall follow y

saddened. 'Well,

volumes or so in my swag-nights and nights, by the light of a fat lamp and a camp fire. I've studied the women of great times-ancient and modern-they're always the same-and I've remarked the type of woman that's got grit-capacity for fine things-You understand all that as well as I do, Joan. Look at the women of the Fren

al rot, d'

lieve in all tha

rage, dignity-the stuff that gives staying power as well as the fire for making good spunk.... Not that I'd put a pure-blood racer

want your wife to be li

that it's the English lady-even one of your sneered-at "Lady Clara Vere de Vere" lot who makes the best front against battle, murder, and sudden death-if it has to come to that.... Just because,' he went on, 'though she might have been brought up in a castle and never have done a hand's turn that could be done for her, she's still got in her veins the blood of

was a peasant girl-and y

o think I could ever get the sort of wife I want, but if I can't, I won't have one at all.... I'll have my money's wo

fully vivid light that came into his blue

ialist in the broadest sense of the term! Oh, I really must put you into one of my articles as

ay. We'll drop the

assed over Mrs Gildea's mouth, and then,

's a

inews, not an artist's lay figure dressed in stage bushman's clothes. There, Mr McKeith, among your other cogitations on the subject of women, y

ich our weary criminals rehabilitate their enfeebled systems by cool sea-breezes and generous diet. Or ministerial picnics to experimental cotton and sugar plantations the

an't know everything. Now, do just sit down and let me ask you questions. And first of

baccy now I'm down from the Bush. I'm trying hard

e hieroglyphical letters and numbers stamped o

know that by the Brands Act you've got to have a number and two letter

new amber mouthpiece, made a

of cigarettes,' said Mrs Gildea. '

cigarette and produced an ancient pipe, which he filled with t

my official instructions, and then you'll have some grasp of th

tters and pushed a small pile

ll that; and meanwhile, if you don't mind the noise, I shall go

oing took all her attention. She worked hard for about ten minutes, hearing sub-consciously the rustle of pap

tly he

s. But these other sheets have got mixed up with something else. I thought at first it was a story you'd given me, and I went on r

ed with a disma

't mean to say that I'v

like what the heroine of a novel would be supposed to say than an ordina

earrangement of the wind-scattered sheets she had put these into the wrong bundle. She ran her eye anxiously over the badly-typed slips, which, with their marginal corrections and smart, allusive jargon of a wor

her th

t a surname anywhere-I couldn't have imagined a woman would write like that-give herself away-as she does

w yet. But I

th less than his usual deliberation

e neve

a flirt

at novel of Hardy's, THE WELL-BELOVED? She's like the man there, who was always in love with the same Ide

is she? ... The fellow is what you'd

imag

him-she must be, or she

can't do anything by halv

an who'd never hang on the fence. And her i

while Mrs Gildea sorted her pa

one of the sort I was

WAS born in

.. You won't te

ask you? After

You can trust me

e would neve

ould ever fall in love with ME!' His voice sank almost to a reverential tone. 'The only thing I do know is that if I got the chance, I'd show her I was strong enough

to get the chance. Please forget

, it's not much odds anyway. Well, have you found the right shee