“Nay, Mr Somers, don’t you be a funker, now. This is the work you were born for. Don’t leave us in the lurch.”
“I shouldn’t be doing what you want me to do.”
“Do what seems best to yourself. We’ll risk it. Make your own conditions. I know as far as money goes you won’t be hard. But take the job on, now. It’s been waiting for you, waiting for you to come out here. Don’t funk at the last minute.”
“I won’t promise at this minute,” said Richard, rising to escape. “I want to go now. I will tell you within a week. You might send me details of your scheme for the paper. Will you? And I’ll think about it hard.”
Mr Struthers watched him as if he would read his soul. But Richard wasn’t going to have his soul read by force.
“Very well. I’ll see you have the whole scheme of the proposal to-morrow. I don’t think you’ll be able to run away from it.”
Richard was thankful to get out of Canberra Hall. It was like escaping from one of the medical-examination rooms in the war. He and Jaz went in silence down the crowded, narrow pavement of George Street, towards the Circular Quay. Richard called at the General Post-office in Martin Place. As he came out again, and stood on the steps folding the stamps he had bought, seeing the sun down Pitt Street, the people hurrying, the flowers at the corner, the pink spread of Bulletins for sale at the corner of George Street, the hansom-cabs and taxis standing peacefully in the morning shadow of the post-office, suddenly the whole thing switched right away from him. He hailed a hansom.
“Jaz,” he said, “I want to drive round the Botanical Gardens and round the spit there—and I want to look at the peacocks and cockatoos.”
Jaz climbed in with him. “Right O!” said the cabby, hearing the order, and they clock-clocked away up the hill to Macquarie Street.
“You know, Jaz,” said Richard, looking with joy at the blue harbour inlet, where the Australian “fleet” lay rusting to bits, with a few gay flags; “you know, Jaz, I shan’t do it. I shan’t do anything. I just don’t care about it.”