Sydney publisher. After waiting many weeks I received a polite
memo to the effect that the story showed great ability, but the writer's
inexperience was too much in evidence for publication. The writer was to
study the best works of literature, and would one day, no doubt, take a
place among Australian novelists.

This was a very promising opinion of the work of a child of thirteen,
more encouraging than the great writers got at the start of their
literary career; but it seemed to even my childish intelligence that the
memo was a stereotyped affair that the publisher sent in answer to all
the MSS. of fameless writers submitted to him, and also sent in all
probability without reading as much as the name of the story. After that
I wrote a few short stories and essays; but now the spirit moved me to
write another book--not with any hope of success, as it was impossible for
me to study literature as advised. I seldom saw a book, and could only
spare time in tiny scraps to read them when I did.

However, the few shillings I had obtained at odd times I spent on paper,
and in secret robbed from much-needed rest a few hours weekly wherein to
write. This made me very weary and slow in the daytime, and a sore trial
to my mother. I was always forgetting things I should not have forgotten,
because my thoughts were engaged in working out my story. The want of
rest told upon me. I continually complained of weariness, and my work was
a drag to me.

My mother knew not what to make of it. At first she thought I was lazy
and bad, and punished me in various ways; but while my book occupied my
mind I was not cross, gave her no impudence, and did not flare up. Then
she began to fear I must be ill, and took me to a doctor, who said I was
much too precocious for my years, and would be better when the weather
got warmer. He gave me a tonic, which I threw out the window. I heard no
more of going out as nurse-girl: father had joined a neighbour who had
taken a road contract, and by this means the pot was kept, if not quite,
at least pretty near, boiling.

Life jogged along tamely, and, as far as I could see, gave promise of
going to the last slip-rails without a canter, until one day in July 1896
mother received a letter from her mother which made a pleasant change in
my life, though, like all sweets, that letter had its bitter drop. It ran
as follows:--

My dear daughter, Lucy,

Only a short letter this time. I am pressed for time, as