May dawned over the world, and throughout New South Wales awoke a stir, reaching even to the sleepy heart of Noonoon. This was owing to the fact that the State Parliament was near the end of its term, and political candidates for the ensuing election were already in the field.

Though not many decades settled, the country had progressed to nationhood, England allowing the precocious youngster this freedom of self-government, and sending her Crown Prince to open her first Commonwealth Parliament. Then the fledgling nation, bravely in the van of progress, had invested its women with the tangible hall-mark of full being or citizenship, by giving them a right to a voice in the laws by which they were governed; and now, watched by the older countries whose women were still in bondage, the women of this Australian State were about to take part in a political election. Not for the first time either,—let them curtsey to the liberality of their countrymen!

The Federal elections, for which women were entitled to stand as senatorial candidates, had come previously, and though old prejudice had been too strong to the extent of many votes to grasp that a woman might really be a senatrix, and that a vote cast for her would not be wasted, still one woman candidate had polled 51,497 votes where the winning candidate had gone in on 85,387, and this had been no "shrieking sister" such as the clever woman is depicted by those who fear progress, but a beautiful, refined, educated, and particularly womanly young lady in the heyday of youth. The cowardly old sneer that disappointment had driven her to this had no footing here, as she had every qualification, except empty-headedness, to have ensured success as a belle in the social world, had she been disposed to pad her own life by means of a wealthy marriage instead of endeavouring to benefit her generation in becoming a legislator. She was a fitting daughter of the land of the Southern Sun, whose sons were among the first to admit their sisters to equal citizenship with themselves, and she brilliantly proved her fitness for her right by her wonderful ability on the hustings, which had been free from any vocal shortcoming and unacquainted with hesitation in replying to the knottiest question regarding the most intricate bill.

The Federal election, however, in a sense had been farther away—fought at long-range, while that of the State was brought right to one's back door.

The Federal campaign had been freer from the provincial bickering which was a prominent feature of the State election, and made it more a hand-to-hand contest, where every elector was worthy of consideration; and though women were debarred from entering the State Parliament, yet they were now beings worth fawning upon for a vote, and their addition to the ranks of the electors gave matters a decided fillip.

The first intimation that the campaign had actually started reached me one afternoon when Dawn drove me into town to see a dentist. The whole Clay household had risen up against me patronising a local dentist.

"They're only blacksmiths," said Andrew. "I could tinker up a tooth as good as they can with a bit of sealing-wax."

However, I could get no doctor to give me a longer lease of life than twelve months, and as it was not a very important tooth, I considered the local practitioners were sufficient to the evil.

The afternoon before, when Ernest had dropped in to see me, I had casually mentioned that Dawn and I were going up town next day, so therefore, what more natural than, as we entered the main street, to see him very busily inspecting wares in a saddler's shop—articles for which he could have no use, and which if he had, a man of his means could obtain of superior quality from Sydney. I diplomatically, and Dawn ostentatiously, failed to notice him as we drove past to where was displayed the legend—S. Messre, Chemist and Dentist, late C. C. Rock-Snake, and where Dawn halted, saying, at the eleventh hour, "You ought to go to Sydney, Charlie Rock-Snake was all right, but I don't care for the look of this fellow."

Going to Sydney, however, would not serve my ends nearly so well as consulting S. Messre; for while I was with him Dawn would remain outside, and what more certain than that Mr R. Ernest Breslaw, walking up the street and quite unexpectedly espying her, and being such a friend of mine, should dawdle with her awaiting my reappearance, while growing inwardly wishful that it might be long delayed.

I knocked on the counter of the dusty, dirty shop, and after a time an extraordinary person appeared behind it.

"Are you Mr Messre?"

"I believe so. Hold hard a bit."

Probably he went to ascertain who he really was, for I was left sitting alone until a splendidly muscular figure in a fashionable pattern of tweeds halted opposite the vehicle holding my driver. I was quite satisfied with Mr S. Messre's methods, though his initial, as Andrew averred, might very well have stood for silly.

The golfing cap came off the heavy red locks, while the bright brown ones under the smart felt hat with the pom-poms, bobbed in response, and Mr S. Messre came upon me again, wiping his fingers on a soiled towel, and tugging each one separately after the manner of childhood.

"Did you want a tooth pulled?"

"Well, I wished to consult you dentally, but not in public," I said, as two urchins came in and listened with all their features.

"Well, hold hard a bit and I'll take you inside."

I held or rather sat hard on the tall hard chair, and heard Ernest explaining to Dawn that he had been swimming in the sun, which made his face as red as his hair, for he gave her to understand that such was not his usual complexion. His red locks, very dark and handsome, which lent him a distinction and endeared him to me, were such a sensitive point with him that his mind was continually reverting to them, and that audacious Dawn unkindly replied—

"It wouldn't do to be all red. If my hair were red I'd dye it green or blue, but red I would not have."

"But it's a good serviceable colour for a man," meekly protested the knight.

"Perhaps for a fighting man," retorted the young minx with no contradictory twinkle in her eye; "but I could never trust a red-headed person: all that I know are deceitful."

I was dismayed. How would a gentle young athlete weather this? To a perky little man of more wits than muscle, or to a gay old Lothario, it would have been an incentive to the chase, but I feared Dawn was too horribly, uncompromisingly given to speaking what she felt, irrespective of grace, to expand this young Romeo to love; but much merciless fire will be stood from beauty, and he made a valiant defence.

"There are exceptions to every rule, Miss Dawn. I never was known as deceitful; ask any one who knows me."

"I don't know any one who knows you."

"Ask your friend inside, I think she'll give me a good character."

"Quite the reverse. If you heard what she says about you, you'd never be seen in Noonoon again;" but this assertion was made with such a roguish smile on eye and lip that Ernest took up a closer position by stepping into the gutter and placing one foot on the step of the sulky and a corresponding hand on the dashboard railing; and in that position I left them, with yellow-haired Miss Jimmeny from the corner pub. walking by on the broken asphalt under the verandahs, and casting a contemptuous and condemnatory glance at the forward Dawn who favoured the men.

Mr S. Messre led the way to a place at the back of the shop which was layered with dust and strewn with cotton-wool and dental appliances, some of them smeared from the preceding victims, evidently. He did not seem to know how to dispose of me, so I placed myself in the professional chair and invited him to examine the broken molar.

"The light is bad here," he remarked, fumbling with my head, and making towards my face with one of the soiled instruments.

"That is not my fault," I replied.

"This is him!" he further remarked, tapping my cheek with a finger.

"Yes."

"He wants patching."

"So he leads me to imagine."

"The nerve would want killing."

"Quite so, and to attend to its wants I'm here."

"I'd take eight shillings to kill the nerve."

"Would you use them as an apparatus to execute it?"

"Then I'd take twelve or thirteen shillings to fill it," he continued.

I was interested in the uniqueness of his methods.

"Would you purpose to powder the shillings or use them whole—I would have thought an alligator's or shark's tooth would scarcely require that quantity of material?"

Mr Messre stared at me in a dazed manner.

"I wouldn't touch the tooth under that," he continued.

"Is there another tooth under it? then extract this one and give the other a fair chance."

"It would be a lot of trouble," he kept on, without specially replying to my remark.

"Perhaps so; when one comes to think of it, teeth, I suppose, are not filled without some exercise on the part of the dentist."

"I wouldn't think of touching that tooth for less than a guinea; why it would take at least an hour to do it."

"This is the first intimation I've had that dentists calculated to mend teeth without spending any time on them," I said.

Mr Messre didn't seem to grasp the drift of my remarks, and as I felt unequal to maintaining the conversation for a more extended period, I announced my intention of thinking about what he had said. He said it would be as well, and I emerged to find Ernest had so far progressed as to be seated in the sulky holding my parasol over Dawn.

Youth and beauty is privileged to command an athlete to hold its sunshade, while old age has difficulty in finding so much as a small boy to carry its basket across the street. Mayhap this is why it is largely the elderly and frequently the unattractive people who fight for honest rights for their class and sex, while it is from pretty young women's lips issues most of the silly rubbish anent it being entirely women's fault that men will not conform to their "influence" in all matters. Only a very small percentage can regard conditions from any but a selfish point of view or conceive of any but their own shoe-pinch.

"I happened to see Miss Dawn here and waited to ask you how you are," said Ernest.

"Just what you should have done," I replied; "and now if you can wait till I investigate another dentist I want your opinion on a purchase I am making."

"Oh, certainly," he hastened to reply; "I'm doing a loaf this afternoon. I thought I heard my oar crack this morning, so came for some leather to tack round it."

This in elaborate explanation of his presence there.

The second dentist proved the antithesis of his contemporary, being short, pleasant, and bright.

"I'll tell you what," he said, laughing engagingly, "the best thing to be done with that tooth is to dress it with carbolic acid. Now this is a secret."

"One of those that only a few don't know, I suppose."

"Perhaps so," he said, laughing still more pleasantly.

"You can do this tooth just as well as I can. Get three penno'worth of acid and put some in once or twice a-day and the nerve will be dead in two or three days, and I'll do the rest."

As he proved such an amiable individual, though probably an exceedingly suburban dentist, I got rid of half an hour in desultory chat, as I could see from the window that the knight and the lady, if not progressing like a house on fire, were at least enjoying themselves in a casual way.

"Did you have only one tooth to be attended to?" inquired Dawn when I appeared.

"Yes; and I fear that it will be one too many for Noonoon dentists," I replied. I could think of nothing upon which to ask Ernest's advice, so I feigned that I was not feeling well enough for any further worry that afternoon, but would command his services at a future date.

I now held the pony while Dawn disappeared into a shop and reappeared with an acquaintance who invited us to attend a political meeting that night. The electors, alarmed at the prodigal propensities of the sitting government, were forming an Opposition League to remedy matters, and the first step was to choose one of the two candidates offering themselves as representatives of this party for Noonoon. The first one was to speak that night in the Citizens' Hall, and by paying a shilling one could become a member of the League, and vote for this candidate or the other.

"Oh, if I only had a vote!" regretfully exclaimed Dawn.

"He's a young chap named Walker, from Sydney,—very rich, I believe. Do you know him?" Mrs Pollaticks inquired of me.

"I've heard of him," I said, exchanging glances with Ernest, "and should like to hear him, if convenient."

"I'll drive you in," volunteered Dawn.

"If you're around you might act as groom," I suggested to Ernest, and he gladly responding, it was agreed that we should begin electioneering that night.

"I knew Ernest would be delighted to be with us, he takes great pleasure in my company," I remarked with assumed complacence as we drove home; and I watched Dawn smile at my conceit in imagining any one took pleasure in my company while she was present, and that any normal male under ninety should do so would have been so phenomenal that she had reason for that derisive little smile.

"You said he was hopelessly red-headed," she remarked; "why, I think he has a handsome kind of red hair. I never thought red hair could be nice, but Mr Ernest's is different."

I smiled to myself.

"I never thought much of men, but this one is different," has been said by more than one bride; and, "I never could suffer infants, but this kid is different to all I've seen," is an expression often heard from proud young fathers.

"His young lady thinks so at all events," I innocently remarked, and we fell into silence complete.