unconscionable time, had neither allowed that, nor her welcome to get cold in the interim, and took us to a room sweet with the scent of a great bowl of wattle, and a bunch of very large, deep purple violets—a room that seemed strangely quiet after the long-heard straining and cracking of the timbers in our cabin. Here our sleep was lulled only by the fitful creaking of the little windmill in the garden.
The charming house in which we stayed at Cottesloe Beach was typical of nearly all West Australian houses. It stood, as even the smallest workman's cottage stands, in its own grounds detached from its neighbours', a roomy bungalow with a broad verandah running right round it. The verandah is an essential, all-important part of a West Australian house. The family sleep in it all the year round, using the bedrooms merely as dressing-rooms; they live on another side of it during the day.
In the country suburbs the houses are built on piles to protect them from the attacks of white ants. White ants can eat everything except jarrah, a hard red eucalyptus wood, which has been tried for paving London streets. The foundations of all the houses are formed of jarrah piles; on the top of every pile is put an iron saucer, and on this again is erected the super-
