Page:Kangaroo, 1923.pdf/66

 Aussie, I'd rather trust an Australian than an Englishman, I would, and a lot rather. Yet there's some of the rottenest people in Sydney that you'd find even if you sifted hell over. Rotten—absolute yellow rotten. And many of them in public positions, too. Simply white-anting society, that's what they're doing. Talk about public affairs in Sydney, talk about undercurrents of business in Sydney: the wickedest crew on God's earth, bar none. All the underhanded tricks of a Chink, a blooming yellow Chinaman, and all the barefaced fair talk of an Englishman. There you are. And yet, I'm telling you, I'd rather trust even a Sydney man, and he's a special sort of wombat, than an Englishman."

"So you've told me before: for my good, I suppose," laughed Somers, not without irony.

"No, now don't you go running away with any wrong ideas," said Jack, suddenly reaching out his hand and laying it on Somers' arm. "I'm not hinting at anything. If I was I'd ask you to kick me out of your house. I should deserve it. No, you're an Englishman. You're a European, perhaps I ought to say, for you've lived about all over that old continent, and you've studied it, and you've got tired of it. And you've come to Australia.  Your instinct brought you here, however much you may rebel against rats and tin cans and a few other things like that. Your instinct brought you here—and brought you straight up against me. Now that I call fate."

He looked at Somers with dark, burning questioning eyes.

"I suppose following one's deepest instinct is one's fate," said Somers, rather flatly.

"There—you know what I mean, you see. Well then, instinct brings us together. I knew it the minute I set eyes on you when I saw you coming across from the Botanical Gardens, and you wanted a taxi. And then when I heard the address, 51 Murdoch Street, I said to myself, 'That chap is coming into my life.' And it is so. I'm a believer in fate, absolute."

"Yes," said Somers, non-committal.

"It's fate that you left Europe and came to Australia, bit by bit, and unwilling to come, as you say yourself. It's fate that brings you to Sydney, and makes me see you that