"I shall be dead first," he answered. "You don't know me."
"Nor you Grey Town. You are not our first reformer; we have had numbers of them, and we have destroyed them without remorse," said Kathleen.
From the window of the room they could look across fields now green in the freshness of early summer, across the racecourse and park, to where Grey Town climbed irregularly towards St. Mary's Church. There it lay, a town whose streets were only partly made; where sanitation had halted in its most primitive stages; where little attempt had been made to assist the beauties of nature. Yet Grey Town was, in the distance, a pretty spot, embowered in green trees, the blue smoke resting over it, and in the distance the great blue ocean. Large buildings and small hovels, well-cared for gardens and filthy back yards, imposing factories and dilapidated shops—there was surely work here for an energetic reformer. But Kathleen knew the strength of vested rights, the strength of contented indolence; above all, the bitter tongue of scandal that was ever ready to destroy a prophet. Others had fought with Grey Town and failed; why not Denis Quirk?
"No," he answered, reading her thoughts. "Grey Town has been waiting for me, and to-morrow I start on Grey Town. See here! This town should be a city. We need a few more cities, and Grey Town shall be one of the first. Given half a dozen factories and an improved system of railways——."
"Factories!" laughed Kathleen, her eyes straying towards the town and its open sea-front, where only a small peninsula of rock protected the bay from the south-west gales. "You are dreaming, Mr. Quirk?"
"Nothing is impossible nowadays. Why no factories in Grey Town? Shall Melbourne possess all the good things? Let us provide for ourselves and for other people, and bring money to the town. Factories Grey Town must have to make agricultural implements, to turn our wool into blankets, our wheat into flour, our milk into butter. Factories and an up-to-date paper."
Mrs. Quirk had listened in a dazed manner to this conversation. It delighted her to sit and listen to her son, just as it did on those rare occasions when her husband talked to her. But she never quite realised what the topic under discussion was, although she nodded or shook her head as she believed was necessary to the occasion.
"Another paper?" cried Kathleen.
"And why not?" asked Mrs. Quirk. "Denis knows what he is saying and doing. Why not another paper if Denis wants it? And what colour would it be, Denis?"
Denis Quirk laughed heartily at his mother's misapprehension, but he threw his arm around her and stooped to kiss her.