A Town like Alice

years, because each year in the dry Bill Wakeling builds a couple more dams for us so we get more and more feed each year."
    She went on to tell me about Mrs Spears, the owner. "She left the Gulf country after her husband died about ten years ago," she said, "and now she lives in Brisbane. Joe and I went down and stayed a couple of nights with her last October; I didn't tell you about it then because I wanted to think it over and we had to find out if we could get a loan, too."
    She told me that Mrs Spears was getting very old, and she wanted to realize a part of the considerable capital that she had locked up in Midhurst; probably she wanted to give it away during her lifetime to avoid death duties. "She asked if we could buy a half share in the station," she said. "She would give us an option to buy the other half at a valuation at the time of her death, whenever that might be. It means finding about thirty thousand pounds; that's about the value of half the stock. The land is rented from the State, of course, and there's seventeen years to go upon the present lease; it means an alteration to the lease to put Joe's name into it jointly with hers."
    She told me that they had been to the bank. The bank would advance two-thirds of the thirty thousand pounds that they would have to find. "They sent an inspector up who knows the cattle business, and he came out to Midhurst," she wrote. "Joe's got a good name in the Gulf country and I think he thought that we were doing all right with the property. That leaves us with ten thousand pounds to find in cash and that's what I wanted to ask you about."
    She digressed a little. "Midhurst's a good station," she said, "and we're very happy here. If we can't take it over Mrs Spears will probably sell it, and we'd have to go somewhere else and start again. I'd hate to do that and it would be a great disappointment to Joe after all the work he's put into Midhurst. I'd be miserable leaving Willstown now, because it's turning into quite a fair sized place, and it's a happy little town to live in, too. I do want to stay here if we can."
    She went on, "I know a cattle station isn't a trustee investment, Noel, any more than any of the other things you've let me put my money into. Will you think it over, and tell me if we can have it? If we can't, I'll have to think again; perhaps I could sell or mortgage some of the businesses I've started since I got here. I should hate to do that, because they might get into bad hands and go downhill. This town's like a young baby-I know something about those, Noel! It needs nursing all the time till it's a bit bigger."
    Another ten thousand pounds, of course, would mean that we should have allowed her to invest half of her inheritance in highly speculative businesses in one district, which was by no means the intention of Mr Macfadden when he made his will. Legally, of course, we were probably safe from any action for a breach of trust by reason of the broad wording of the discretionary clause that I had slipped into the will. I spent a day or two thinking about this before I showed her letter to Lester, and it came to me in the end that our duty was to do what Mr Macfadden would himself have done in similar circumstances.
    What would that queer recluse in Ayr have done if he had had to settle this point? He was an invalid, of course, but I did not think he was an unkind or an unreasonable man. He had not made that long trust because he distrusted Jean Paget; he did not even know her. He had made it for her good, because he thought that an unmarried girl in her twenties who was mistress of a large sum of money would be liable to be imposed upon. In that he may well have been right. But Jean Paget was a married woman of thirty with two children now, and married to a sensible and steady sort of man, whatever his ideas on poddy-dodging might be. Would Mr Macfadden, in these circumstances, still have insisted on the trust being maintained in its original form?
    I thought not. He was a kindly man-I felt sure of that- and he would have wanted her to have her Midhurst station, since that was where her home and all her present interests were. He was a careful, Scottish man, however; I thought he would have turned his mind more to the details of her investment in Midhurst to ensure that she got good value for this ten thousand pounds. Looking at it from this point of view I was disturbed at the short tenure of the lease. Seventeen years was a short lime for