and, as Elsie sometimes told herself, a nice girl, like Rose Garfit, for instance, would have behaved very differently. "But I'm not a nice girl," Elsie said passionately one day to Ina, who had been remonstrating with her upon her conduct." A nice girl would never have done the things I've done. And what does it matter, Ina? If I disgust Frank Hallett—well, so much the better. I think that is why I do it."
But Frank Hallett was always the same, always devoted, always timid of obtruding his devotion, very quiet sometimes, often sad, but ready at any moment to answer at Elsie's beck.
He was a good deal occupied just now with his new duties. There was a great measure coming—a great measure for Leichardt's Land, involving the destinies, so its opponents said, of that promising young colony, and if it were carried—indeed so also its opponents said, involving the immediate ruin and destruction of the colony's best interests. The question was one of a loan to which Sir James Garfit's Ministry had pledged themselves, and it was whispered loudly that Sir James Garfit's Ministry would be defeated.
Elsie was not at the Opening of the Assembly, which was performed in all manner of state by the new Governor, a prosy, rather pompous old man, with a wife who had set herself the difficult task of reforming the morals and manners of the Leichardtstonians. Elsie listened to the salvo of guns which announced the conclusion of the ceremony while she ironed a white frock to wear at a concert the next evening, to which she was going with the Prydes. She felt a little out of things and cross because Minnie Pryde was more favoured than she was—to say nothing of Rose Garfit. The thought flashed across her mind that perhaps next year she might be taking her place as the wife of one of the ministers in that august pageant, and that Minnie Pryde would be nowhere, and even Hose Garfit obliged to give way to her.
"I wonder if he will do anything," she said to herself. "He is certain to be asked to join the ministry, if Sir
