carried his hands behind him, as he does now, when he hasn't got the swag --
but his shoulders were back in those days. Of course he wasn't
the Oracle then; he was young Tom Marshall -- but that doesn't matter.
Everybody liked him -- especially women and children.
He was a bit happy-go-lucky and careless, but he didn't know anything
about `this world', and didn't bother about it; he hadn't `been there'.
`And his heart was as good as gold,' my aunt used to say.
He didn't understand women as we young fellows do nowadays,
and therefore he hadn't any contempt for 'em. Perhaps he understood,
and understands, them better than any of us, without knowing it.
Anyway, you know, he's always gentle and kind where a woman or child
is concerned, and doesn't like to hear us talk about women as we do sometimes.

"There was a girl on the goldfields -- a fine lump of a blonde,
and pretty gay. She came from Sydney, I think, with her people,
who kept shanties on the fields. She had a splendid voice,
and used to sing `Madeline'. There might have been one or two bad women
before that, in the Oracle's world, but no cold-blooded, designing ones.
He calls the bad ones `unfortunate'.

"Perhaps it was Tom's looks, or his freshness, or his innocence, or softness
-- or all together -- that attracted her. Anyway, he got mixed up with her
before the goldfield petered out.

"No doubt it took a long while for the facts to work into Tom's head
that a girl might sing like she did and yet be thoroughly unprincipled.
The Oracle was always slow at coming to a decision, but when he does
it's generally the right one. Anyway, you can take that for granted,
for you won't move him.