A Town like Alice

before I get the work in hand. You see, there's only three of us on Midhurst-whites, that is-me and Jim Lennon, and Dave Hope. We've got to find three more who'll work out all the week up-country, forty miles from the homestead, working with a pick and shovel mostly, and responsible enough to get on by themselves with only just a visit once a week or once a fortnight. Well, you can't get men like that. There are fewer people in the Gulf country every year. If it wasn't for the Abo stockmen, the boongs, I don't know what we'd do."
    "Are there really only three of you-whites-running Midhurst?"
    He put his arm around her shoulders. "When you come it'll be four."
    She thought it would be five or six soon after that, but she refrained from saying so. "How many would you like to have?"
    "You mean with eighteen thousand head of cattle, sometime in the future?" She nodded. "I could use twenty on a station like that," he said. "That wouldn't be too many, not if you were running tame bulls in a paddock, to improve the stock. There'd be fences and stockyards and all sorts of things to make. I could use twenty white ringers, and some other hands besides."
    She said slowly, "Pete Fletcher said that there were fifty ringers coming into Willstown, using it as their town."
    "That's about right," he said.
    "If all the stations developed like you say," she observed, "that means seven times as many ringers, because there are only three of you now. Three or four hundred ringers in the district, all with wives and families, and shops for them, and pubs, and garages, and radio, and cinemas. There's room here for a town of two or three thousand people, Joe."
    He smiled. "You'll be making it as big as Brisbane next."
    She said severely, "Joe. There was an old girl in our party in Malaya called Mrs Frith. She thought you must be Jesus Christ, because you'd been crucified. I tried to tell her that you weren't. If she saw what you're doing now she'd probably believe me."
    They talked about Mrs Frith for a time, and then reverted to more mundane matters. "Joe," she said, "listen to me. Would you think it very stupid if I said I wanted to start a business in Willstown?"
    He stared at her. "A business? What sort of business could you do in Willstown?"
    "Do you know what I was doing in England?" she inquired.
    "Shorthand typing, wasn't it?" he asked.
    She took his hand and smoothed it between her own. "There's such a lot that you don't know about me," she said. "So much to tell you." She started in to tell him about Pack and Levy, and Mr Pack, and about alligator-skin shoes, and Aggie Topp. Half an hour later she said, "That's what I want to do, Joe. Do you think it's crazy?"
    "I don't know." And then, quite unexpectedly, he said, "I took a walk down Bond Street, looking in the shops."
    She turned to him, surprised. "Did you, Joe?"
    He nodded. "I asked Mr Strachan what I ought to see in London and he asked me how much history I knew and I told him that I never got much schooling. So then he said to go and see St Paul's and Westminster Abbey, and then he said to take the bus to Piccadilly Circus and walk up Regent Street and along Oxford Street and down Bond Street and back along Piccadilly; he said I'd see all the best shops that way."
    She nodded. It seemed very far away from Green Island, and the whisper of the coconut palms overhead in the sea breeze.
    "I saw a lot of alligator-skin shoes," he said. "Sort of dressing-cases, too." He turned to her. "It was interesting seeing those, and wondering if they were skins that old Jeff Pocock trapped. Made me feel quite at home. Beautifully done up, they were. But the prices-oh my word. Most of them hadn't got no labels, but there was one, just a little alligator-skin case with silvery things in it, for a lady. A hundred guineas, that one was."
    She was excited. "Joe, I bet that was made by Pack and Levy. We did all that sort of work."
    "You weren't thinking you could make that sort of stuff in Willstown?"
    "Not cases, Joe. Just shoes-shoes to start with, anyway. A little workshop with six or seven girls making alligator-skin shoes. It won't cost very much, Joe-not more than I can afford to lose if it goes wrong. But I don't know-perhaps it won't go wrong. If it worked out all right, and if it paid, it’ll be a good thing for the town."
    "Six or seven girls all earning money at a job in Willstown?" he said thoughtfully. "You wouldn't keep them six weeks. They'd all be married-oh my word, they