‘Aren’t you going back with her?’
asked Kitty, in surprise, as they rose to their feet.
‘No,’ he replied, dusting his knees with
his hand, ’I stay all night in Ballarat, with
Madame’s kind permission, to see the theatre.
Now, good-bye at present, Bebe,’ kissing her,
’I will be back at eight o’clock, so you
can excuse me to Madame till then.’
He ran gaily down the hill waving his hat, and Kitty
stood looking after him with pride in her heart.
He was a lover any girl might have been proud of,
but Kitty would not have been so satisfied with him
had she known what his real thoughts were.
‘Marry!’ he said to himself, with a laugh,
as he walked gaily along; ’hardly! When
we get to Melbourne, my sweet Bebe, I will find some
way to keep you off that idea—and when we
grow tired of one another, we can separate without
the trouble or expense of a divorce.’
And this heartless, cynical man of the world was the
keeper into whose hands innocent Kitty was about to
commit the whole of her future life.
After all, the fabled Sirens have their equivalent
in the male sex, and Homer’s description symbolizes
a cruel truth.
FRIENDS IN COUNCIL
The Wattle Tree Hotel, to which Mr McIntosh had directed
Pierre, was a quiet little public-house in a quiet
street. It was far away from the main thoroughfares
of the city, and a stranger had to go up any number
of quiet streets to get to it, and turn and twist round
corners and down narrow lanes until it became a perfect
miracle how he ever found the hotel at all.
To a casual spectator it would seem that a tavern
so difficult of access would not be very good for
business, but Simon Twexby, the landlord, knew better.
It had its regular customers, who came there day after
day, and sat in the little back parlour and talked
and chatted over their drinks. The Wattle Tree
was such a quiet haven of rest, and kept such good
liquor, that once a man discovered it he always came
back again; so Mr Twexby did a very comfortable trade.
Rumour said he had made a lot of money out of gold-mining,
and that he kept the hotel more for amusement than
anything else; but, however this might be, the trade
of the Wattle Tree brought him in a very decent income,
and Mr Twexby could afford to take things easy—
which he certainly did.
Anyone going into the bar could see old Simon—a
stolid, fat man, with a sleepy-looking face, always
in his shirt sleeves, and wearing a white apron, sitting
in a chair at the end, while his daughter, a sharp,
red-nosed damsel, who was thirty-five years of age,
and confessed to twenty-two, served out the drinks.
Mrs Twexby had long ago departed this life, leaving
behind her the sharp, red-nosed damsel to be her father’s
comfort. As a matter of fact, she was just the
opposite, and Simon often wished that his daughter
had departed to a better world in company with her
mother. Thin, tight-laced, with a shrill voice
and an acidulated temper, Miss Twexby was still a
spinster, and not even the fact of her being an heiress
could tempt any of the Ballarat youth to lead her
to the altar. Consequently Miss Twexby’s
temper was not a golden one, and she ruled the hotel
and its inmates—her father included—with
a rod of iron.
