place in this
country. Yes, I think so. Have you any special leanings? Is there any
particular work that you are specially keen on?'

Like a flash the thought passed through my mind: 'What a miserable
creature I must be! There's nothing I particularly want to do. If he
finds that out, there's an end to any interest in me, of course. Why
haven't I thought of this before? What can I say?' And in the same
moment, without appreciable pause, I was startled, but agreeably
startled, to hear my own voice saying in quite an intelligent way:
'Well, my father wrote, of course; his work was literary work,
and--newspapers, you know.'

I can answer for it that I had never till that moment given a single
thought to any such notion as a literary career for myself. As well
think of a prime minister's career, I should have thought. But, as I
well remember, my very accent, intonation, and choice of words had all
insensibly changed to fit, as I thought, the taste and habit of my new
friend. And I felt it would be an extravagant folly to talk to him as
I had talked with Ted, or as I talked with fellow orphans at St.
Peter's, of 'pound-er-week-an'-all-found' jobs, or the 'good money'
there was 'in carting,' or the fine careers that offered in connection
with the construction of new railways. I had often been told you could
not beat the job of cooking for a shearers' or a navvies' camp; and
that a wideawake boy could earn 'good money' while learning it, as a
rouseabout assistant. It seemed to me that there would have been
something too absurdly incongruous in attempting to talk of such
things to Mr. Rawlence. Hence, perhaps, my audacious suggestion of the
literary career. There I might secure his interest. And, sure enough,
I did.

'Ah! to be sure, to be sure,' he said, nodding encouragingly. 'Well,
with that in view, Sydney is practically the only place, you know.
Mind you, I don't say it's easy, or that one could hope to make
headway quickly; but gradually, gradually, a fellow could feel his way
there, if anywhere in the colony. It is undoubtedly our centre of art
and literature, and culture generally. At first you might have to do
quite different sort of work; but, while doing it, you know, you could
be always on the lookout, always feeling your way to better things.
Sydney is, at all events, a capital city, you see. There is society in
Sydney, in a metropolitan sense. There is culture. One is continually
meeting interesting people wh