Melba was going to sing! And he, Paul Minas of Hale's Turning, was actually in a corner of the globe where such miracles came to pass!
Unhappily, when he had examined the placard more closely he had found that it was many months old. It was a lazy baker. She had come and gone. Even so, he was breathing air into which glorious notes had been poured—notes as much more enthralling than Miss Todd's as heaven was more enthralling than earth—if there "would have been" a heaven! He had nearly seen a dream come true—had been "hot," as they said in the game of "search the button." And Dr. Wilcove and the old man coolly expected him to go back to Hale's Turning to be educated!
Of all the sensations that had stirred him, the most profound, the most haunting had been the sound of the chimes—in the tower of the Fremantle town hall. The second evening in port he had hurried through his tasks and come ashore alone, unwilling to have his first impressions clouded by the inept remarks of a companion. After ferreting his way through side-streets, he had walked to a sandy hill behind the town from which he could see the ocean. The hill was covered with tufts of wiry grass, and here and there were eucalyptus trees, their long smooth, bark-patched trunks showing pink and lavender and palest lemon in the glow of the dying day. Far away, on one side, was an Oval dotted with cricketers, and a fife and drum band was playing "Cock o' the North." The brick and stone villas, so quaint after the wooden houses of Nova Scotia, clustering beneath him and stretching along the river bank, seemed ineffably cosy. Each was a home, replete with mother, father and children: the three essential factors of the game called "House" which was a favourite with the little girls of Hale's Turning. Here he was on the opposite side of the world, alone on a bare hill-top, with mere fancies to
