Then after a time Jack put his hands into his lap, and looked up at Somers. “You mustn’t think I get the wind up, you know,” he said, “if you ask me a question. You can ask me what you like, you know. And when I can tell you, I’ll tell you. I know you’d never come shoving your nose in like a rat from under the skirting board when nobody’s looking.” “Even if I _seem_ to,” said Somers, ironically. “No, no, you don’t seem to. And when I _can_ tell you, I’ll do so. _I_ know I can trust you.” Somers looked up wondering, and met the meditative dark eyes of the other man resting on his face. “There’s some of us chaps,” said Jack, “who’ve been through the war and had a lick at Paris and London, you know, who can tell a man by the smell of him, so to speak. If we can’t see the _colour_ of his aura, we can jolly well size up the _quality_ of it. And that’s what we go by. Call it instinct or what you like. If I like a man, slap out, at the first sight, I’d trust him into hell, I would.” “Fortunately you haven’t anything _very_ risky to trust him with,” laughed Somers. “I don’t know so much about that,” said Jack. “When a man feels he likes a chap, and trusts him, he’s risking all he need, even by so doing. Because none of us likes to be taken in, and to have our feelings thrown back in our faces, as you may say, do we?” “We don’t,” said Somers grimly. “No, we don’t. And you know what it means to _have_ them thrown back in your face. And so do I. There’s a lot of the people here that I wouldn’t trust with a thank-you, I wouldn’t. But then there’s some that I would. And mind you, taking all for all, I’d rather trust an Aussie, I’d rather trust an Australian than an Englishman, I would, and a lot rather. Yet there’s some of the rottenest people in Sydney that you’d find even if you sifted hell over. Rotten--absolute yellow rotten. And many of them in public positions, too. Simply white-anting society, that’s what they’re doing. Talk about public affairs in Sydney, talk about undercurrents of business in Sydney: the wickedest crew on God’s earth, bar none. All the underhanded tricks of a Chink, a blooming yellow Chinaman, and all the barefaced fair talk of an Englishman. There you are. And yet, I’m telling you, I’d rather trust even a Sydney man, and he’s a special sort of wombat, than an Englishman.” “So you’ve told me before: for my good, I suppose,” laughed Somers, not without irony.