A Town like Alice

of water, isn't it? I used to know. I put in just a bit. It tells you on the packet." The girl turned the packet over in her hands, scrutinizing it. "Where it says, directions for use," said Jean.
    From the door behind her Mrs Connor said, "Annie don't read very well."
    The girl said, "I can read."
    "Oh, can you? Well then, read us out what's written on that packet."
    The girl put the carton down. "I ain't had much practice lately. I could read all right when I was at school."
    To ease the situation Jean said, "All you do is just go on putting in the soap flakes till the water lathers properly. It's different with different sorts of water, because of the hardness."
    "I use ordinary soap," said Annie. "It don't come up so well as this."
    Presently the girl said, "Are you a nurse?"
    Jean shook her head. "I'm a typist."
    "Oh, I thought you might be a nurse. Most women that come to Willstown are nurses. They don't stay here long. Six months, and then they've had enough." There was a pause. "If you'd been a nurse," the girl said, "I'd have asked you for some medicine. I've been feeling ever so ill lately just after getting up. I was sick this morning."
    "That's bad," said Jean cautiously. There did not seem to be much else to say.
    "I think I'll go up to the hospital," said Annie, "and ask Sister Douglas for some medicine."
    "I should do that," said Jean.
    In the course of the day she met most of the notable citizens of Willstown. She walked across to the store to try and buy some cigarettes, but only succeeded in buying a tin of tobacco and a packet of papers. While she was chatting to Mr Bill Duncan in the store and examining the piece of quartz with gold in it that he showed her, Miss Kenroy came in, the school-teacher. Half an hour later, as Jean was walking back across the road to the hotel, Al Burns met her and wanted t» introduce her to Mr Carter, the Shire Clerk.
    She slept most of the afternoon upon her bed, in common with the rest of Willstown, when the day cooled off she came down to the lower veranda and sat there in a deckchair, as she had the previous evening. She had not long to wait before the ringers found her; they came one by one, diffidently, unsure of themselves before this English girl, and yet unable to keep away. She had a little circle of them squatting with her on the veranda presently.
    She got them to talk about themselves; it seemed the best way to put them at their ease. "It's all right here," said one. "It's good cattle country; more rain here than what you get down further south. But I'm off out of it next year. My brother, he's down at Rockhampton working on the railway. He said he'd get me in the gang if I went down and joined him."
    Jean asked, "Is it better pay down there?"
    "Well, no. I don't think it's so good. We get five pounds seventeen and six here-that's all found, of course. That's for an ordinary stockrider."
    She was surprised. "That's not bad pay, is it? For a single man?"
    Pete Fletcher said, "The pay's all right. Trouble is this place. There's nothing to do here."
    "Do you get a cinema here ever?"
    "There's a chap supposed to come here every fortnight and show films in the Shire Hall-that building over there." She saw a low, barnlike wooden structure. "He hasn't been for a month, but he's coming next week, Mr Carter says."
    "What about dances?" Jean asked.
    There was a cynical laugh. "They try it sometimes, but it's a crook place for a dance. Not enough girls."
    Pete Fletcher said, "There's about fifty of us stockmen come into Willstown, Miss Paget, and there's two unmarried girls to dance with, Doris Nash and Susie Anderson. That's between the age of seventeen and twenty-two, say. Not counting the kids and the married women."
    One of the ringers laughed sourly. "Susie's more than twenty-two."
    Jean asked, "But what happens to all the girls? There must be more than that around here?"
    "They all go to the cities for a job," said somebody. "There's nothing for a girl to do in Willstown. They go to Townsville and Rockhampton-Brisbane, too."
    Pete Fletcher said, "That's where I'm going, Brisbane."
    Jean said, "Don't you like it on a cattle station, then?" She was thinking of Joe Harman and his love for the outback.
    "Oh, the station's all right," said Pete. He hesitated, uncertain how to put what he felt to this Englishwoman without incautiously using a rude word. "I mean," he said, "a fellow's got a right to have a girl and marry, like anybody else."
    She stared at him. "It's