A Town like Alice

think, on the whole, you're wise to travel by air. I think you'd find the Red Sea very trying." He went on to tell me what I could do and what I mustn't attempt, all the old precautions that he had told me before.
    I went back to my office and saw Lester, and told him what I was proposing to do. "I'm going to take about three months holiday," I said, "starting at the end of April. I'm going out by air, and I don't know quite how long I shall stay for. If I find air travel too tiring on the way out, I may come home by sea." I paused. "In any case, you'll have to work on the assumption that I shall be away for some considerable time. It's probably about time you started to do that, in any case."
    "You really feel that it is necessary for you to go personally, yourself?" he asked.
    "I do."
    "All right, Noel. I only wish you hadn't got to put so much of your energy into this. After all, it's a fairly trivial affair."
    "I can't agree with that," I said. "I'm beginning to think that this thing is the most important business that I ever handled in my life."
    I left London one Monday morning, and travelled through to Sydney on the same airliner, arriving late on Wednesday night. We stopped for an hour or so at Cairo and Karachi and Calcutta and Singapore and Darwin. I must say the aeroplane was very comfortable and the stewardess was most kind and attentive; it was fatiguing, of course, sleeping two nights in a reclining chair and I was glad when it was over. I stayed two nights in Sydney to rest, and took a little drive around in a hired car during the afternoon. Next day I took the aeroplane to Cairns. It was a lovely flight, especially along the coast of Queensland, after Brisbane. The very last part, up the Hinchinbrook Channel between Cairns and Townsville, must be one of the most beautiful coastlines in the world.
    We landed at Cairns in the evening, and here I had a great surprise, because Joe Harman met me at the aerodrome. The Dakota, he told me, now ran twice a week to the Gulf country, partly on account of the growth of Willstown, and he had come in on the Friday plane to take me out on Monday, "I got one or two little bits of things to order and to see to," he said. "My solicitor, Ben Hope, he's here in Cairns too. I thought that over the weekend you might like to hear the general set-up of Midhurst, 'n have a talk with him."
    I had not heard the slow Queensland speech since he had come to me in Chancery Lane, over three years before. He took me in a car to the hotel, a queer, rambling building rather beautifully situated, with a huge bar that seemed to be the focal point. We got there just before tea, the evening meal, and went in almost at once and sat down together. He asked me if I would drink tea or beer or plonk.
    "Plonk?" I asked.
    "Red wine," he said. "I don't go much for it myself, but jokers who know about wine, they say it's all right."
    They had a wine list, and I chose a Hunter River wine which I must say I found to be quite palatable. "Jean was very sorry she couldn't come and meet you," he said. "We could have parked Joe with someone, but she's feeding Noel, so that ties her. She's going to drive into Willstown and meet the Dakota on Monday."
    "How is she?" I asked.
    "She's fine," he said. "Having babies seems to suit her. She's looking prettier than ever."
    We settled down after tea on the veranda outside my bedroom, and began discussing the business of Midhurst. He had brought with him copies of the accounts for the station for the last three years, neatly typed and very easily intelligible. I commented upon their form, and he said, "I'm not much of a hand at this sort of thing. Jean did these before she went into the hospital. She does most of the accounts for me. I tell her what I want to do out on the station, and she tells me how much money I've got left to spend. She's got the schooling for the two of us."
    Nevertheless, I found him quite a shrewd man, very well able to appreciate the somewhat intricate points that came up about the lease and his capital improvements. We talked for a couple of hours that night about his station and about the various businesses that Jean had started in the town. He was very interesting about those.
    "She's got twenty-two girls working in the workshop," he said. "Shoes and attache cases and ladies bags. That's the one that isn't doing quite so well as the others." He turned the pages of the accounts to show me. "It's making a profit now, but last year there