A Town like Alice

opened getting the ice-cream parlour furnished and stocked. She was resolved to have this open by Christmas Day, and she achieved her aim by opening on December 20th. On Joe's advice she only opened half of it at first, leaving the parlour for the Abos till it was established that they wanted ice-cream. This saved her the wages of a coloured girl and the expense of furnishing. In fact, it was not for nearly a year that the demand arose and Abo ringers started hanging round the kitchen door to buy an ice-cream soda. She opened the coloured annexe in the following September.
    She stood with Joe outside in the blazing sunlit street on that first afternoon, looking at what she had done. The workshop and the ice-cream parlour stood more or less side by side on the main street. The windows of the workshop were closed to keep the cool air in, but they could hear the girls singing as they worked over the shoes. Christmas was near, and they were singing carols-'Holy Night', and 'Good King Wenceslas', and 'See Amid the Winter Snow'. The shirt was sticking to Jean's back and she shifted her shoulders to get a little air inside. "Well, there it all is," she said. "Now we've got to see if we can make it pay."
    "Come on and I'll buy you a soda," he said. "That'll help." They went in and bought a soda from Rose Sawyer behind the counter. "This part of it'll pay," he said. "I don't know about the shoes, but this should do all right. I was talking to George Connor up at the hotel. He's getting very worried about his bar, with you starting up."
    "I don't see why he's got anything to worry about," she said. "I'm not going to sell beer."
    "You're going to sell drinks to ringers," he remarked. "If you had a bar instead of this, wouldn't it rile you?"
    She laughed. "I suppose it would. I can't see myself putting the bar out of business, Joe."
    "I can see you doing all right, all the same." As they sat at the little chromium glass-topped table, Pete Fletcher came in shyly and sidled up to the bar and ordered an ice-cream, and began chatting with Rose Sawyer. Joe said, "Poor old George Connor." They laughed together, and then he said, "I bet you don't keep Rose six months."
    Jean had seen a good deal of Rose Sawyer in the last month. "I'll take you," she said. "Bet you a quid she's still there in a year from now, Joe." They shook hands on it according to the custom of the place. "If she is," he said, "it'll be a miracle."
    Now that the businesses were started, she was very tired; she felt slack and listless in the great heat, drained of all energy. She would have liked to go out with Joe to Midhurst that evening and live quietly there for a day or two, sleeping and riding and playing with the little wallaby. A cautionary instinct warned her not to offend against the rural code of morals by an indiscretion of that sort; if she was to make a success of what she had set out to do for women in that place her own behaviour would have to be above reproach. No mothers in the outback, she knew, would care to let their daughters work for her if it were known that she was spending nights alone at Midhurst with Joe Harman; no married man would care to bring his wife and daughters to an ice cream parlour run by a loose woman of that sort.
    It was a Wednesday, but Sunday was no longer an off day for Jean since it was likely to be the biggest day of all for the ice-cream and soft drinks. She arranged with Joe that he should call for her at the hotel soon after dawn and take her out to Midhurst for the day. She said goodbye to him and went to her room as soon as work stopped in the workshop, pausing only to see the girls from the workshop sampling the ice-cream parlour. She went and lay down on her bed, exhausted and too tired to eat that night; it was refreshingly cool in the workshop building, for the air-conditioner had been on all day. She took off her clothes and put on her pyjamas, and slept in the coolness; she slept so for twelve hours.
    She had been out to Midhurst several times since that first visit and had fitted herself out with a small pair of ringer's trousers in Bill Duncan's store for riding, with a pair of elastic-sided ringer's riding boots to match. She met Joe in the early morning with a little bundle of riding things under her arm, and got into the utility with him. As usual they drove a little way out of town and stopped for an exchange of mutual esteem; as he held her he asked, "How are you feeling this morning?"
    She smiled. "I'm