tralian earth a good bit before they're done with it," said Jack. "If you call the land a bride, she's the sort of bride not many of us are willing to tackle. She drinks your sweat and your blood, and then as often as not lets you down, does you in."
"Of course," said Harriet, "it will take time. And of course a lot of love. A lot of fierce love, too."
"Let's hope she gets it," said Jack. "They treat the country more like a woman they pick up on the streets than a bride, to my thinking."
"I feel I could love Australia," declared Harriet.
"Do you feel you could love an Australian?" asked Jack, very much to the point.
"Well," said Harriet, arching her eyes at him, "that's another matter. From what I see of them I rather doubt it," she laughed, teasing him.
"I should say you would. But it's no good loving Australia if you can't love the Australian."
"Yes, it is. If as you say Australia is like the poor prostitute, and the Australian just bullies her to get what he can out of her and then treats her like dirt."
"It's a good deal like that," said Jack.
"And then you expect me to approve of you."
"Oh, we're not all alike, you know."
"It always seems to me," said Somers, that somebody will have to water Australia with their blood before it's a real man's country. The soil, the very plants seem to be waiting for it."
"You've got a lurid imagination, my dear man," said Jack.
"Yes, he has," said Harriet. "He's always so extreme."
The train jogged on, stopping at every little station. They were near the coast, but for a long time the sea was not in sight. The land grew steeper—dark, straight hills like cliffs, masked in sombre trees. And then the first plume of colliery smoke among the trees on the hill-face. But they were little collieries, for the most part, where the men just walked into the face of the hill down a tunnel, and they hardly disfigured the land at all. Then the train came out on the sea—lovely bays with sand and grass and trees, sloping up towards the sudden hills that were like
