ever, that had no offence in it. Meanwhile the dimpled young person was waiting a few yards off with well-bred ease for her turn: and when I was sufficiently greeted the two girls went to her; and somehow it hurt me to see Dimples bow and kiss those fair young things, with that touch of lovely stateliness about them. I wondered if she would kiss their mother, who I knew had always been noted for her calm, serenely-contented dignity. She did it; she grasped her hand with a little deferential, worshipful smile and bend that must have been supremely flattering.
It told certainly. Mrs. Fleming invited her and the man straight off to tea next day.
The drive to the house was pretty in a way, with the low blue hills in the distance—and nearer, the dull green-covered hills, curving half round the horizon in monotonous, short, humpy surges. Queer hills they were under the glamour of the sunshine and the shade, which gave them colour, and varied the monotony of their broken, blunted curves; when the deep blue haze, that only an Australian atmosphere seems able to produce in perfectness, was on them, then those hills were lovely and bewildering, full of mystery and delight. When the sun was off, and the haze in the valleys had gone grey, then the same hills were hideous, and it brought cold shivers down one's spine so much as to look at them, they were so cold and dead and unfinished. The life of these hills always seemed to come from the outside,—from the
