AustLit

A badly wounded WWI veteran returns belatedly to find himself depressed and in ill-health, the world indifferent, and his war bride attracted to her father's young business partner. When the veteran decides to prove himself by working with the firm the two men discover they were war mates. The partner gives up his tendre for the wife, but before he leaves tells her how her husband saved his (the partner's) life in the war. Thinking him a hero helps her to save the marriage.

A badly wounded WWI veteran returns late from the war to find the world indiferent and his bride attracted to her father's young business partner. When he decides to try to prove himself by taking a job with the firm the two men discover they were war mates. The partner relinquishes his affection for the bride, but before he leaves tells her how his husband saved the former's life in the war. Thinking him a hero helps her to revive the marriage.

A white woman traveling by sea in the Torres Strait hears the cry of a strange local bird and later is told the legend of two brothers with an inquisitive and talkative sister. When fellow fishermen drink their water on the reef the brothers spear them in revenge, then abandon the sister on an island so she cannot betray them. She is transformed into the loudly crying 'Kwoka' bird. The story is told in front of a chattery and inquisitive young girl, who is compelled to take it as an object lesson, and learn to be quiet. By the end of the story her aspiring lover has actually proposed to her.

A man whose girlfriend sneers at him as lacking backbone spends six years mining gold in the western desert, then is drawn back to Brisbane by a picture of Queen street in a newspaper left near him by a whirlwind. He assembles his gold and makes a perilous trip toward Brisbane, but in a storm he has an accident and breaks his back. Reviving in hospital he finds his penitent ex-girlfriend a nurse at his bedside, and, despite his permanently paralysed leg, they agree to marry.