A Town like Alice

could to comfort her with words, but words were little good to Annie. Her interests were not moral, but practical. "Pa will be mad as anything when he gets to know about it," she said apprehensively. "He'll beat the daylights out of me."
    There was nothing Jean could do to help the girl, and presently they went to bed. Jean lay awake for a long time beset by human suffering.
    She continued for the next two days in Willstown, sitting on the veranda and talking to the ringers, and visiting the various establishments in the town. Miss Kenroy took her and showed her the school. Sister Douglas showed her the hospital. Mr Carter showed her the Shire Hall with the pathetically few books that constituted the public library; Mr Watkins showed her the bank, which was full of flies, and Sergeant Haines showed her the Police Station. By the end of the week she was beginning to know a good deal about Willstown.
    Jim Lennon came into town on Saturday, as predicted, for his grog. He came in an International utility that Jean learned was the property of Joe Harman, an outsize in motor cars with a truck body behind the front seat, furnished with tanks for seventy gallons of petrol and fifty gallons of water. Mr Lennon was a lean, bronzed, taciturn man.
    "I got an air mail letter yesterday," he said with the deliberation of the Queenslander. "Joe's starting on his way back from England in a ship. He said he'd be about the middle of October, so he thought."
    "I see," said Jean. "I want to see him before I go back to England. I've arranged to fly to Cairns on Wednesday and wait there for him."
    "Aye. There's not much for you to do, I don't suppose, waiting round here. I'd say come out and live at Midhurst, but there's less to do there."
    "What's Joe been doing in England, Mr Lennon? Did he tell you what he was going for?"
    The stockman laughed. "I didn't even know he was going. All I knew he was going down to Brisbane. Then I got a letter that he'd gone to England. I don't know why he went. He did say in this letter I got yesterday he'd seen a bonza herd of Herefords, belonging to a Sir Dennis Frampton. Maybe he's having bulls shipped out to raise the quality of the stock. He didn't tell me nothing."
    She gave him her address as the Strand Hotel in Cairns, and asked him to let her know when he got accurate news of Joe's arrival.
    That evening as she was sitting in her deckchair on the veranda, Al Burns brought a bashful, bearded old man to her; he had disengaged the old man from the bar with some difficulty. He was carrying a sack. "Miss Paget," he said, "I want you to meet Jeff Pocock." Jean got up and shook hands. "Thought you'd like to meet Jeff," Al said cheerfully. "Jeff's the best alligator hunter in all Queensland. Aren't you, Jeff?"
    The old man wagged his head. "I been huntin 'gators since I was a boy," he said. "I reckon I knows 'gators by this time."
    Al said, "He's got an alligator skin to show you, Miss Paget." To the old man he said, "Show her your skin, Jeff. I bet she's never seen a skin like that in England."
    Jeff Pocock took the sack and opened it, and took out a small alligator skin rolled up. "Course," he said, "I cleaned and trimmed and tanned this one myself. Mostly we just salt them and sell 'em to the tannery like that." He unrolled the skin before her on the floor of the veranda. "Pretty markings, ain't they? I bet you never seen a skin like that in England."
    The sight of it brought back nostalgic memories to Jean of red buses on the Great West Road at Perivale, and Pack and Levy Ltd, and rows of girls sitting at the work benches making up alligator-skin shoes and alligator-skin handbags and alligator-skin dressing-cases. She laughed. "I've seen hundreds of them in England," she replied. "This is one thing I really know about. I used to work in a factory that made these skins up into handbags and dressing-cases." She picked up the skin and handled it. "Ours were harder than this, I think. You've done the curing very well, Jeff."
    Two or three other men had drifted up; her story was repeated back and forth in other words, and she told them all about Pack and Levy Ltd. They were very interested; none of them knew much about the skins after they had left the Gulf country. "I know as they make shoes of them," said Jeff. "I never seen a pair."
    A vague idea was forming in Jean's mind. "How many of these do you get a year?" she asked.
    "I turned in eighty-two last year," the old man said. "Course that's a little