visitors and for their flirtations, and how late they would sit up at nights to make the pretty, simple dresses which Elsie and Ina wore at the balls and garden parties, and which ill-natured mothers of less attractive daughters declared were bought at expensive shops with borrowed money, which Elsie's husband would one day have to pay back. But as a matter-of-fact it was Mrs. Valliant's boast that they had never owed a penny, and that Ina had gone to her husband with as respectable a trousseau as any other Leichardt's Town girl could have had. Ina's wedding, however, had crippled the widow's resources for some time to come, and there was little enough wherewith to fit Elsie out for her winter campaign. Yet in spite of their poverty, they got along happily enough, and Elsie sang over her work and Mrs. Valliant, in gloves, swept the floors, and made the beds, and did the clear-starching and ironing so beautifully that the Valliant girls' white frocks were the admiration of the town.
It was a pretty cottage in its way, though it was so small—only four rooms and a verandah and lean-to kitchen, but it had a little garden which Peter the Kanaka boy looked after—a garden with flaming poinsettia shrubs, and some oleander trees, and a passion-creeper arbour, and a small plantation of bananas, and some lantana shrubs growing on the bank which shelved down to the river. It was a great thing having this tiny bit of frontage on the river, for the girls had had a boat, which Elsie now managed alone, and which saved her a good deal in omnibus fares and ferriage. The Leichardt River winds about like a great S, and beyond Emu Point there lies the North Side, as it is called, where are all the grand shops and the Houses of Parliament and Government House and the Clubs, and beyond, again, is the South Side, where smaller folk dwell. The big people have mostly houses with large gardens along the north bank of the river, or off Emu Point. The Valliant cottage was not in the fashionable part of Emu Point, but lay in the neck, and was approached through a paddock of gumtrees, once part of a large property, now gradually be-
