A Town like Alice

her in. She's a bit young, but she'd be all right. The other was a girl of nineteen who's been working in the store at Normanton. I didn't like her so much."
    "I don't want to take on anyone else until that first batch of shoes have been sold," said Jean. "If Mrs Dawson comes in again, tell her that we'll let her know about the kid after the wet. I'd like to have her if I can. I don't think we want the other one, do we?"
    "I don't think so. Bit of a slut, she was."
    They talked about the details of the business for an hour. "We haven't got the overalls back yet," said Aggie. "I went and saw Mrs Harrison, but her back's bad again. We'll have to find someone else." They issued the girls with a clean overall each week, to work in, and the washing of these overalls was something of a problem to them.
    "What we want," said Jean, "is one of those Home Laundry things, and do them ourselves. We could run it off the generating set… Of course, it needs hot water." She thought for a minute. "Think about that one," she said. "Hire it out, do people's washing for them. Anyway, see if you can find another Mrs Harrison for the time being."
    Aggie said, "Everybody's talking about your ride, Miss Paget."
    "Are they?"
    She nodded. "Even that girl from Normanton, she knew about it, too."
    "How on earth did she get to hear?"
    "It's these little wireless sets they have up on the cattle stations," Aggie said. "The boys here were telling me, they all listen in to what everybody else is saying-telegrams and everything. They've got nothing else to do. You can't keep anything secret in this country." And then she said, "I heard the aeroplane go off this morning. Was the man very bad?"
    "Not too good," said Jean. "Sister thinks they'll be able to save the leg. We ought to have a doctor here, of course."
    "There's not enough work to keep a doctor occupied in a place like this," said Aggie. "Where did they fly him to?"
    "Cairns. There's a good hospital in Cairns." She turned to the door, and paused. "Aggie," she said, "how do you think a swimming-pool would go in Willstown? Would people use it?"
    Joe Harman rode into the town that afternoon with Pete Fletcher. He put his horse into the stable behind the Australian Hotel and came to find Jean; he was wet and dirty in his riding clothes because the creeks were up, and though he had started spick and span from Midhurst as befits a man going in to town to see his girl, he had had to swim one of the two creeks on the way holding to the mane and saddle of his horse, which had rather spoilt the sartorial effect. He was half dry when he got to Willstown; he combed his hair and emptied out his boots, and went to the ice-cream parlour to ask Rose where Jean was.
    He found her in her bedroom, writing a long letter to me. He tapped on the door and she came out to him. "We can't talk here, Joe. I'll never hear the last of it if you come in. Let's go and have an ice-cream in the parlour." It was borne in on her that this was literally the only place in Willstown where young men and young women could meet reputably to talk; the alternative, in the wet, would be to go into the stable or a barn. They picked a table by the wall; she looked around her at the rectangular walls and the adjacent tables with discontent. "This won't do at all," she said. "I'll have some sort of booths made, little corners where people can talk privately."
    "What'll you have?" he asked.
    "I'll have a banana split," she said. "I want feeding up. I don't know if you know it, but I've been very ill. Don't pay, Joe-have it on the house."
    He grinned. "Think I'm the kind of man to take a girl out and let her shout?"
    "If you're feeling like that, I'll have two. The bananas will be going bad by tomorrow." She was getting fruit flown in by the Dakota every Wednesday, and she had little difficulty in selling the small quantities she got at prices that would pay for the air freight. Her trouble was that usually she could not keep it for a week.
    He came back with the ices and sat down with her. "Now Joe," she said, "what about that poddy corral?"
    He grinned sheepishly, and looked over his shoulder. "That's crook," he said. "There's no poddy corral on Midhurst."
    "There's something damn like one," she said, laughing. "Come clean, Joe. What happened to Don Curtis, anyway?"
    "He was moseying about on my land where he hadn't got no right to be," Joe said carefully. "He found that corral where I'd got some poddys-my own poddys, mind you. I'd put