moclean sword of civilised life--no
longer stretches out before me, a long and arid expanse demanding
provision. This preoccupation began for me in the week of my eleventh
birthday, when my father asked me one evening if I thought we could
manage now without Ted's services.

'It's not that I pay him much,' said my father, stroking his chin
between thumb and forefinger, as his manner was when pondering such a
point; 'but the fact is we can by no manner of juggling pretend to be
able to afford even that little. Then, again, you see, the poor chap
must eat. The fish he brings us are a real help, and no wage-earner I
ever met could take pot-luck more cheerfully than Ted. What's more, I
like him, you like him, and he is, I know, a most useful fellow to
have about. But, take it any way one can, he must represent fifty
pounds a year in our rate of expenditure, and-- Well, you see, Nick, we
simply haven't got it to spend.'

It was on the tip of my tongue, I remember, to ask my father why he
did not send to the bank and ask for more money; and by that may be
gauged the crudely unsophisticated stage of my development. But I must
remember, too, that I bit back the question, and, ignorant of all
detail though I was, felt intuitively sure, first, that the whole
subject was a sore and difficult one for my father, and, secondly,
that I must never ask for or expect anything calling for monetary
expenditure. My vague feeling was that the World had somehow wronged
my father by not providing him with more money. I felt instinctively
that It never would give him any more; and that It had given him
whatever he had, only as the result of personal sacrifices which
should never have been demanded of him. I resented keenly what seemed
to me the World's callous and unreasonable discourtesy to such a man
as my father, whom, I thought, It should have delighted to honour.

As illustrating the World's coarse and brutal injustice, I thought,
there was the case of a man like Nelly Fane's father, or, again, the
storekeeper in Werrina. (Mr. Fane would hardly have thanked me for the
conjunction.) Neither, it was clear, possessed a tithe of the brains,
the distinction, the culture, or the charm of my father; yet it was
equally obvious (in different ways) that both were a good deal more
liberally endowed with this world's gear than we were. I felt that the
whole matter ought to be properly explained and made clear to those
powers, whoever they were, who