Bevin nodded. The Australian choked off something he was going to say, as a brother on his left claimed him. I heard them talk horses, while Bevin developed his herb-growing projects with the well-groomed brother opposite. At the end of the banquet, when pipes were drawn, the Australian addressed himself to Bevin, across me, and as the company re-arranged itself, we three came to anchor in the big ante-room where the best prints are hung. Here our brother across the table joined us, and moored alongside. The Australian was full of racial grievances, as must be in a young country; alternating between complaints that his people had not been appreciated enough in England, or too fulsomely complimented by an hysterical Press. “No-o,” Pole drawled, after awhile. “You’re altogether wrong. We hadn’t time to notice anything--we were all too busy fightin’ for our lives. What _your_ crowd down under are suffering from is growing-pains. You’ll get over ’em in three hundred years or so--if you’re allowed to last so long.” “Who’s going to stoush us?” Orton asked fiercely. This turned the talk again to larger issues and possibilities--delivered on both sides straight from the shoulder without malice or heat, between bursts of song from round the piano at the far end. Bevin and I sat out, watching. “Well, _I_ don’t understand these matters,” said Bevin at last. “But I’d hate to have one of your crowd have it in for me for anything.” “Would you? Why?” Orton pierced him with his pale, artificial eye. “Well, you’re a trifle--what’s the word?--vindictive?--spiteful? At least, that’s what _I_’ve found. I expect it comes from drinking stewed tea with your meat four times a day,” said Bevin. “No! I’d hate to have an Australian after me for anything in particular.” Out of this came his tale--somewhat in this shape: It opened with an Australian of the name of Hickmot or Hickmer--Bevin called him both--who, finding his battalion completely expended at Gallipoli, had joined up with what stood of Bevin’s battalion, and had there remained, unrebuked and unnoticed. The point that Bevin laboured was that his man had never seen a table-cloth, a china plate, or a dozen white people together till, in his thirtieth year, he had walked for two months to Brisbane to join up. Pole found this hard to believe. “But it’s true,” Bevin insisted. “This chap was born an’ bred among the black fellers, as they call ’em, two hundred miles from the nearest town, four hundred miles from a railway, an’ ten thousand from the grace o’ God--out in Queensland near some desert.” “Why, of course. We come out of everywhere,” said Orton. “What’s wrong with that?”