flies out because the dinner isn't quite right, or because some little stupidity is wrong, and sulks like a spoiled child. It's because Ina doesn't sulk too—because she puts up with his pettishness so angelically, and takes such pains that everything shall be right next time, that I am sure she isn't happy. It's unnatural."
"Surely it's very natural if she cares for him."
"Poor Ina," said Elsie, softly. "Well, she is happy enough, apparently, when she is fidgetting after the chickens and furbishing up her doll's house."
"It does look a little like a bush doll's house," said Frank.
They were close to the Humpey now. It was a queer little slab place, roofed with bark, standing against a background of white gum-trees, which, with their tall, ghostlike trunks and sad grey foliage, gave a suggestion of dreariness and desolation to the otherwise cosey homestead. Lord Horace had made the best of the Humpey. It had been a stockman's hut, two slab rooms and a lean-to; and now another hut had been joined to it, which was Lord Horace's kitchen, and there were sundry other lean-to's and straggling shanties, which served for guest-rooms and meat-stores. The verandah of the Humpey had an earthen floor, and, the posts were of barked saplings. But there were creepers growing around the posts and festooning the bark roof, and there were stands of ferns against the slab walls, and squatters' chairs with crimson cushions which made splashes of colour. Lord Horace's chair had a glass of some spirituous concoction on its arm-table, which his attentive wife had just brought to him, and he was filling his pipe, while Ina, who was only a few degrees less lovely than Elsie, leaned against the post, and waited submissively to be told the day's news. Lord Horace took a great deal of credit to himself for having left the Humpey in its original state of roughness. "Some fellows, you know, would have gone to no end of expense in cartin' cedar and shinglin' and paintin', and spoilin' a really good Australian effect," he was wont to say. "That's the worst of you Australians, you've
