your mate. But all the same, I shan't look out for MY wife
until I can afford to give her as good a show as she'd be likely to
have if the stopped at home. You see, a real woman must be a sportsman
in her way of taking life as much as a man, and I maintain as a general
proposition 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 fighting ancestors--men who were ready to
lay down their lives for God and King and country and their women's
honour--and of women too who'd maybe held the stronghold that had been
their husband's reward, and kept the flag flying, when to fail or
flinch meant death or worse.... Why, look at your Lady Nithisdales and
your Lady Russells and your Maria Theresas....'

'And your Joan of Arc--who was a peasant girl--and your Charlotte
Corday....'

'Oh, you beat me there.... And I wasn't intending to fire off a speech
anyway.... And anyway, Joan, its awful cheek to 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 worth. Romance--Ideals--something more LIFTING
than beef and mutton and cutting a bigger dash than your neighbour....
See?'

He broke off with a laugh, and the wonderfully vivid light that came
into his blue eyes made him look like an ardent youth.

'And you a democrat!' jeered Mrs Gildea. 'You, a champion of the
people's rights; you, an Imperialist in the broadest sense of the term!
Oh, I really must put you into one of my articles as a certain type of
modern Australian. In fact, Colin, that's what I wanted to talk to you
about.'

'All right, fire away. We'll drop the marriage question.'

'To be resumed later.' A quizzical look passed over Mrs Gildea's mouth,
and then, 'Oh, what a pity!' she muttered to herself.

'What's a pity?'

'Never mind! The English mail's in--as you may see. I'll show you what
Mr Gibbs says. He didn't like my last letter. He says he wants bones
and sinews, not an artist's lay figure dressed in stage bushman's
clothes. There, Mr McKeith, among your other cogitations on the subject
of women, you may try to realise that the mission of a lady special
correspondent is not all'--she looked r