" in the accounts, an' "near-enough" in the
buyin', an' "near-enough" in the prices, an'--here I am, barely makin'
wages--worse wages than I paid counter hands--cuttin' sleepers. But I
get me tucker out of it, an' me bitter 'baccy, an' that; an'---well,
it's "near-enough," an' so I stick at it.'

It was on a Sunday morning of delicious brightness and virginal
freshness that I reached the irregularly spreading outskirts of
Dursley, a pretty little town in Gloucester county, the appearance of
which, as I approached it from the highest point of the long ridge
upon whose lower slopes it lay, appealed to me most strongly. Though
still small Dursley is an old town, for Australia. The figures against
it in the gazetteers are not imposing: 'School of Arts, 1800 vols.,
etc.--' But, even in the late 'seventies, it possessed that sort of
smoothness, that comparative trimness and humanised air of comfort,
which only the lapse of years can give. Your new settlement cannot
have this attraction, no matter how prosperous or well laid out; and
it is a quality which must always appeal especially to the native of
an old, much-handled land, such as England. A newcomer from old
Gloucester might have thought Dursley raw and new-looking enough, with
its galvanised iron roofs and water-tanks, and its painted wooden
houses, fences, and verandah posts. But in such a matter my standards
had become largely Australian, no doubt. At all events, as I skirted
the orchard fence of the most outlying residence of Dursley, I
remember saying to myself aloud, as my habit was since I had taken to
the road:

'Now this Dursley is the sort of place I'd like to get a job in. I'd
like to live here, till----'

'H'm! Outer the mouths o' babes and suckerlings! Tssp! Well, I admire
your perspicashon, youngfellermelad, anyhow, an' you can say I said
so.'

At the first sound of these words, apparently launched at me from out
the _Ewigkeit_, I spun round on my bare heels in the loamy sand of the
track, with a moving picture thought in my mind of little gnomes in
pointed caps and leathern jerkins, with diminutive miner's picks in
their hands, and a fancy for the occasional bestowal of magical gifts
upon wandering mortals. The picture was gone in a second, of course;
and I glared at the orchard fence as though that should make it
transparent.

'Higher up, sonny! Think of your arboracious ancestors, an' that
sorter thing.'

This time my ears gave me truer guidance