What a balm to the tempest-tossed soul is a little love, though it may be fleeting and fickle!  I was able to weep now, with wild hot tears, and with my sister’s arms around me I fell asleep without undressing further.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Was E’er a Rose Without Its Thorn?

I arose from bed next morning with three things in my head—­a pair of swollen eyes, a heavy pain, and a fixed determination to write a book.  Nothing less than a book.  A few hours’ work in the keen air of a late autumn morning removed the swelling from my eyes and the pain from my temples, but the idea of relieving my feelings in writing had taken firm root in my brain.  It was not my first attempt in this direction.  Two years previously I had purloined paper and sneaked out of bed every night at one or two o’clock to write a prodigious novel in point of length and detail, in which a full-fledged hero and heroine performed the duties of a hero and heroine in the orthodox manner.  Knowing our circumstances, my grandmother was accustomed, when writing to me, to enclose a stamp to enable me to reply.  These I saved, and with them sent my book to the leading Sydney publisher.  After waiting many weeks I received a polite memo to the effect that the story showed great ability, but the writer’s inexperience was too much in evidence for publication.  The writer was to study the best works of literature, and would one day, no doubt, take a place among Australian novelists.

This was a very promising opinion of the work of a child of thirteen, more encouraging than the great writers got at the start of their literary career; but it seemed to even my childish intelligence that the memo was a stereotyped affair that the publisher sent in answer to all the MSS. of fameless writers submitted to him, and also sent in all probability without reading as much as the name of the story.  After that I wrote a few short stories and essays; but now the spirit moved me to write another book—­not with any hope of success, as it was impossible for me to study literature as advised.  I seldom saw a book, and could only spare time in tiny scraps to read them when I did.

However, the few shillings I had obtained at odd times I spent on paper, and in secret robbed from much-needed rest a few hours weekly wherein to write.  This made me very weary and slow in the daytime, and a sore trial to my mother.  I was always forgetting things I should not have forgotten, because my thoughts were engaged in working out my story.  The want of rest told upon me.  I continually complained of weariness, and my work was a drag to me.

My mother knew not what to make of it.  At first she thought I was lazy and bad, and punished me in various ways; but while my book occupied my mind I was not cross, gave her no impudence, and did not flare up.  Then she began to fear I must be ill, and took me to a doctor, who said I was much too precocious for my years, and would be better when the weather got warmer.  He gave me a tonic, which I threw out the window.  I heard no more of going out as nurse-girl:  father had joined a neighbour who had taken a road contract, and by this means the pot was kept, if not quite, at least pretty near, boiling.