erself. The women and girls called
her Miss Wilson, and didn't like her. Most of the single men--and some
of the married ones, perhaps--were gone on her, but hadn't the brains
or the pluck to bear up and try their luck. I was gone worse than any, I
think, but had too much experience or common sense. She was very good to
me--used to hand me out cups of tea and plates of sandwiches, or bread
and butter, or cake, mornings and afternoons the whole time I was
painting the bank. The Doctor had known her people and was very kind
to her. She was about the only woman--for she was more woman than
girl--that he'd brighten up and talk for. Neither he nor Jack Drew were
particularly friendly with Browne or his push.

"The banker, the storekeeper, one of the publicans, the butcher (a
popular man with his hands in his pockets, his hat on the back of his
head, and nothing in it), the postmaster, and his toady, the lightning
squirter, were the scrub-aristocracy. The rest were crawlers, mostly pub
spielers and bush larrikins, and the women were hags and larrikinesses.
The town lived on cheque-men from the surrounding bush. It was a nice
little place, taking it all round.

"I remember a ball at the local town hall, where the scrub aristocrats
took one end of the room to dance in and the ordinary scum the other.
It was a saving in music. Some day an Australian writer will come along
who'll remind the critics and readers of Dickens, Carlyle, and Thackeray
mixed, and he'll do justice to these little customs of ours in the
little settled-district towns of Democratic Australia. This sort of
thing came to a head one New Year's Night at Redclay, when there was a
'public' ball and peace on earth and good will towards all men--mostly
on account of a railway to Redclay being surveyed. We were all there.
They'd got the Doc. out of his shell to act as M.C.

"One of the aristocrats was the daughter of the local storekeeper;
she belonged to the lawn-tennis clique, and they WERE select. For some
reason or other--because she looked upon Miss Wilson as a slavey, or
on account of a fancied slight, or the heat working on ignorance, or on
account of something that comes over girls and women that no son of sin
can account for--this Miss Tea-'n'-sugar tossed her head and refused
Miss Wilson's hand in the first set and so broke the ladies' chain and
the dance. Then there was a to-do. The Doctor held up his hand to stop
the music, and said, very quietly, that