Alfred Curran.
Sounds grand—Sub-editor of The Eungella Star. It sounded grander still, when Jessop wrote to me—I was Jessop’s cousin, you know, and he was under promise to give me an opening if he could. He said he had started a paper and struck gold, and that if I liked, I might come out and run the paper, while he looked out for more gold.
Didn’t I jump at the offer, just! Didn’t I make sure, that I’d struck gold in my line, too! Didn’t I see visions of a fortune and a coming back to England, and a great Liberal organ started, with all the New World go, and getting into Parliament, and all the rest!
But it wasn’t for me that destiny reserved the fulfilment of those dreams. It was for Nan’s husband. Nan didn’t bring me luck.
Sometimes it seems to me, that she brought more bad luck than good, to the men who loved her—all, that is, except one. And there were a good many of them. It wasn’t her fault. But that’s how it came out in my experience of that Christmas Eve.
Anyhow, my fortune hasn’t amounted to much. Eungella Diggings smashed up, and Jessop smashed up, and The Star smashed up, too. Things have a way of smashing up in Australia.
And here I am, a hack reporter, glad to get a job on anything. Bush races or bush-ranging, prize cattle, or a new cure for pleuro; “bush naturalist” articles, or gush over an election; it is all “copy.”
Election business, it was this time. Election finished; “copy” sent in, and a free and easy kind of invitation from one of the election bosses—the biggest squatter in these parts—to loaf about his station and pick up material, till the Christmas holidays are over.
I like loafing. I’m doing a story of bush life. I’m happy enough in the bachelors’ quarters. My lady squatteress doesn’t encourage me at the Big House, though I’m asked there for Christmas dinner to-morrow. The new chums are “tailing” on an out-station, and the Superintendent has gone to town for a spree.