think it worth your while you can investigate my
place now. All the summer weather folk has gone. I would
only take one or two nice people now that would live with us
in our own plain way and who would be company for the
family, so I could not undertake to give you a separate
parlour and table and carry on that way, but if you like to
call and see me, please yourself."

Accordingly, I lost no time in once more patronising the town 'busman,
and being his only patron that day, he rattled me past the tin
kangaroo weather-cocks, the battered corner pub. and its colleague a
few doors on, and entering the principal street where Jimmeny's Hotel
filled the view, turned to the right across fertile flats held in
tenure by patient Chinese gardeners.

Being a region of quick growth, it was of correspondingly rapid decay,
and the season of summer fruits had been entirely superseded by autumn
flowers. The vale of melons was now a valley of chrysanthemums, and
with a little specialisation in this branch of horticulture could
easily have out-chrysanthemumed Japan. Without any care or cultivation
they filled the little gardens on every side; children of all sizes
were to be seen with bunches of them; while discarded blossoms lay in
the streets, after the fashion of the superabundant melons and orchard
fruits during their season.

About a mile from the station we halted before a ramshackle old
two-storey house that was covered by roses and hidden among orange and
fig trees. The approach led through an irregular plantation of cedar
and pepper trees, pomegranates and other shrubs, and masses of
chrysanthemums and cosmos that flourished in every available space.

The friendly 'busman directed me to a gable sheltered by a yellow
jasmine-tree, where I tapped on the door with my knuckle. Footsteps
approached on the inside, and after some thumping and kicking on its
panels it was burst open by a nimble old lady in immaculate gown, with
carefully adjusted collar, and wavy hair combed back in a tidy knot
and with still a dark shade in it.

"Them blessed white ants!" she exclaimed. "They've very near got the
place eat down, so that you have to make a fool of yourself opening
the door, and that blessed feller I sent for hasn't come to do 'em up
yet; but some people!" She finished so exasperatedly that I felt
impelled to state my name and business without delay, and with a prim
"Indeed," she led the way across a