Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/383

 of the State to compete, as they alleged, with them and lower the price of labour.

'It was the prisoners' colony,' asserted the demagogues who formulated this view. 'Free men had no right to come here, subsisted and helped by the Government.'

Enmore, being about three miles from the Sydney College, was rather far for a daily walk before the advent of little Bet, but with the aid of a drive now and then (of course there were no omnibuses) I managed it pretty well at first. The only house at all near us was tenanted by Mrs. Erskine, with whose sons I used to beguile the tedium of the road. Once we asked a wood-carter for a lift, whom not acceding to our request, we pelted with stones. He complained to the authorities, and we suffered in person accordingly. Then an adventure befell which led to grief and anxiety. It might well have been serious. I had started on the home-track in the afternoon, when one of the tropical storms not unknown in Sydney to this day commenced. The rain came down as if to repeat the deluge, an inch apparently falling every ten minutes. The low lands near the Haymarket were flooded. I was drenched. Streams and torrents coursed down every channel. The drains burst up. Things looked bad for a long walk with creeks to cross. At this juncture a tidy-looking old woman (she sold milk) invited me to enter her dwelling. I did so, and found myself in a neat and cleanly cottage. The rain not abating, she invited me to stay for tea, exhibiting most excellent bread and butter. Finally, discovering that I had so far to go and the waters being still 'out,' she prevailed upon me, nothing loth, to remain all night.

Unluckily, as it turned out, my father was in town, and had called at the school to take me home. He was told that I had left shortly before. Driving rapidly, being eager to overtake me, he reached home to find that I had not turned up. After an anxious interval, during which fears obtruded themselves that I had fallen into a creek or waterhole and so got drowned, he rode back into town, searching vainly of course for my extremely naughty self, then calmly reading by the light of a tallow candle, my aged hostess meanwhile knitting. When he again visited the College on the off-chance of my having concluded to return, and was told to the contrary, he gave me up for lost. Mr. Cape, however, stated his belief that