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can bet on it!”
    “Would you be very far away from us?” I asked him huskily. It seemed all Australians bet on everything all the time.
    He bent his head to hear me the better. “My word,” he said, “you’ll be a breath of Old Scotland in the Outback!” He smacked his lips in exaggerated satisfaction. “ Most of us pastoral fellows are Irish by descent round the Murchison. Andy is the odd man out. But it’s all in the family! My word, they’re going to love you, Mrs. Fraser!”
    I glanced up with pride at Mr. Fraser, aware of his eyes watching me .
    “I’ll look forward to it, Mr. Connor,” I said, and blushed in case he should think that I was putting myself forward. But apparently Australians don’t worry about such things, for he kissed me again with some enthusiasm and said he would have to be going.
    “So must we!” Mr. Fraser said cheerfully.
    “See yer!” said Frank Connor, and was gone.
    Mr. Fraser gave me an odd look and squeezed my arm gently. “Do n ’t mind Frank,” he said. “He’s a fine fellow underneath all that bounce.”
    I was surprised. “I like him,” I said. “I wish we were all as free and easy—” I broke off, blushing furiously as I realised that Mr. Fraser had been talking about Frank Connor kissing me. “It’s no more than his manner!” I exclaimed.
    “And you didn’t mind it?”
    I shook my head, “Why should I?” I said bravely. “I’m not a young girl to be fashed by a man’s ways!”
    He escorted me carefully across the foyer and into the waiting taxi. “Is that so? I congratulate you, Mrs. Fraser!”
    I peeped up at him, anxious lest I had displeased him. “You like him too, don’t you?” I asked quickly.
    “He’s okay,” he drawled.
    The taxi drew away from the hotel and joined the streaming traffic, making its way to Victoria and the B.O . A.C. terminal. Once there, we would be well on our way to Heathrow and the aeroplane that was to carry us to Australia.
    “Don’t be too friendly with Frank Connor,” Mr. Fraser went on slowly. “He’s a bachelor—a rich one and he has a reputation with the ladies.”
    “He’s a grand man ! ” I agreed with enthusiasm.
    “The Murchison has little to do. Most people gossip about one another all the time—”
    “I know,” I said impatiently. “They gossip in the glen too, but there’s small harm done by it!”
    “Kirsty, I won’t have you talked about,” he said a great deal more ste rn ly .
    I shrugged my shoulders, a trifle uneasy myself.
    “As my wife—”
    My Scottish temper got the better of me. “But I’m not your wife!” I exclaimed angrily. “Not in any way that matters! It takes more than a few words to make a woman a wife—even words from a minister. I may be Mrs. Fraser in public, but to myself I’ll be Kirsty MacTaggart until I die!”

 
    CHAPTER THREE
    I had never seen an aeroplane close up, except once, and that one bore little relation to the gleaming monster which swallowed us up, like some all-enveloping nightmare, and disgorged us, only a couple of days later, on the opposite side of the world. We flew and we came down to refuel in romantic-sounding places whose airports all looked exactly the same, and then we flew again. I ticked off the places on the Southern Route that we had been to and never seen. There was New York, San Francisco, Honolulu, and Fiji, and then bang on time there was Sydney spread before us, full of red and green roofs, and the new Opera House, shaped like a boat in full sail, and the racecourse where Mr . Fraser said all the smart people gathered for the equivalent of the English Ascot and Derby, or something like that, for he talked of Melbourne and Adelaide and Alice too, and I was tired enough to be easily confused.
    And Sydney itself was not an end to the journey. Together with a single lady, who had sat across the way from us in the aeroplane from England, and whose ankles had swollen badly in the long flight, we were shepherded along to be