At least three excellent portraits of such men are given. The best is that of George Drafton, in _In Her Earliest Youth_. In no other novel are the rough good-nature and loose, slangy talk of the young Australian sportsman of the upper-middle class more naturally expressed. The author's knowledge of the cant terms and short cuts in the vocabulary of the not necessarily ill-educated but supremely careless colonial young man is almost equal to that of Rolf Boldrewood, who has been listening to the talk of such men all his life. Uncle Piper's exasperating 'gentleman' son George is also a noticeably clever creation in a book full of good portraits; and it is a tribute to the author's skill that as the story progresses our sympathy for him increases rather than diminishes, notwithstanding the needless agonies of rage he occasions his father. The most vivid chapter to be found in any of Tasma's novels is that in which Uncle Piper, after witnessing a love-scene between Laura Lydiat and George, sends for the latter and threatens to cast him off if a marriage of the pair should take place. Laura is an agnostic and a sort of 'new woman' who maintains a constant attitude of disdain towards her stepfather. She and George have spent much of their youth together, discussed pessimistic theories in Piper's hearing, and generally ignored him, and made him feel his ignorance in ways very trying to the temper of a man who, 'now that his money-making days were over, had a passion for dictating absolutely to everyone about him.' 'He'd talk' and 'she'd talk,' as Mr. Piper would complain; 'and they'd spout their scraps of poetry that hadn't an ounce of the sense any good, honest old rhyme could show; and you'd think, to hear them, they were doing their Maker a favour by condescending to go on living at all!' An alliance of this kind between the two people for whom he had done most with his wealth was bad enough, but Uncle Piper was determined that it should not become a closer one. Was this not one reason for his importation of an entire family of impoverished relatives, that they and his little pet daughter, the angelic Louey, should readjust the balance of household power in his favour? It was on the eve of the arrival of his aristocratic connections, the Cavendishes, that he determined to put a stop to his son's courtship. George, at the outset of the momentous interview with his father, speculated inwardly on his chances of being able to soften the old man to a favourable view of 'the only wish that he had ever framed with a feeling that savoured of intensity.' Before entering the ornamental tower where his father awaited him, George had composed his face to its usual expression of laziest indifference. His imperturbability always 'had the effect of a goad upon his father's temper. His face never changed colour when the old man's was purple. His voice never lost its measured drawl.'