An Australian Girl. Catherine Martin
said Mrs. Courtland, in a motherly way, never dreaming that this precocious tattle had been invented by Laurette on the spur of the moment.
'Well, life is full of accidents; who knows but both these events may come off one day,' said Alice solemnly, though there was a merry gleam in her eyes.
And then Mrs. Tareling went off on another tack.
'You are always so beautifully quiet and sedate in Adelaide, it is really like coming to another world from Melbourne. And the season was so late with us this year. What with the Russian and German men-of-war and the visit of the Sultan of Morocco, it was a perfect whirlpool. I felt at last I would like to retire to the Grande Chartreuse.'
'But I suppose you find the dear little farinaceous village almost as quiet. Hardly anything happens with us,' said Alice. 'People die occasionally, but only once and very seldom. Yes, and holes come occasionally in the carpets—of the poorer classes, you know;' and Alice glanced half ruefully at the Brussels pile which had been in the drawing-room for twenty years and began to show signs of wear in places.
'Yes; and even your Governors last longer than they do elsewhere,' answered Mrs. Tareling. 'Now, with us in seven years we have had two; and next month Sir Marmaduke leaves; and who do you think is his successor? Why, Lord Weavelow, whose wife is Talbot's first cousin, and Lord Weavelow a connection of his sister-in-law, Lady Gertrude. It is rather trying to be so closely related to the new Governor in our circumstances.'
'Oh, my dear, it is very likely they will be quite nice people. I dare say you will like them very well,' said Mrs. Courtland soothingly, which amused her daughters not a little.
'Mother never did, and never will, comprehend the little subtleties of a snob,' as Alice said afterwards half despairingly.
'Oh, I dare say we shall like them very much. But then we are so poverty-stricken; and the people who entertain most in Melbourne get more ostentatious every year—private theatres, and enormous ball-rooms, and French cooks who keep a tandem and a Cremona violin.'
'Fancy all these complexities off the back of the idyllic sheep!' said Stella, laughing. 'Well, Laurette, if I were you, I would go in for a sweet and severe simplicity. It would really be more distingué.'
'That is true. But nothing is so costly as the only form of simplicity open to you if you have the right of tambour at Government House,' returned Mrs. Tareling, with the air of one who is laying down axioms for the guidance of society from Olympian social heights.
At this moment a little diversion was caused by the entrance of two elderly Quaker ladies, maiden sisters, in soft dove-coloured dresses and bonnets, and white fichus of Indian muslin. They were followed by afternoon tea, over which the older ladies fell into a group to themselves, talking softly over sick and afflicted people, and new candidates for admission to the Asylum for Incurables.
'Still, I suppose you will hardly retire to the wilds of Kannawijera when your relatives begin to reign at Government House?' said Alice, taking up the thread of conversation as she presided at the tea-tray.
'No; not this coming season, at any rate. We had to give up our house at Yarra Yarra; they raised the rent so atrociously. But we have secured a smaller one at Toorak, with the principal rooms en suite; almost all the partitions in folding-doors, that can be pushed back in the most wonderful way. Just like one of those knives—at least, they look like knives, but when you open the handle it turns into corkscrews, and toothpicks, and glove-buttoners, besides several blades. Everyone says Melbourne will be awfully full by May; so we caught time by the forelock, and took this house from November. But we don't pay a penny more than if we waited later. It is to be a most brilliant season, everyone says. And now, Stella, I want to arrange about your long-promised visit.'
'Oh, you are very kind,' said Stella.
'Don't say that: it's a bad omen. Always before when I asked you to come, you said, "You are very kind," and didn't turn up. It's no use coming for a couple of weeks, like the girls who come from the wilds of the Bush for a birthday ball, and don't know a soul but a few lanky men in split gloves, who don't waltz, and huddle up together behind the doors.'
'Ah, Laurette, you had better think twice before you are burdened through part of a brilliant season with a country cousin like me,' said Stella, laughing merrily at the picture called up by Laurette.
'I suppose it would be no use asking you to come as well, Allie, just for a couple of weeks?' said Mrs. Tareling graciously.
Allie raised her hands in mock despair.
'How can you ask? I am in training to keep a house on nine or ten pounds a week, and save out of that for a rainy day.'
'Oh, how very romantic! But surely no rainier day can come than nine or ten pounds a week?' said Mrs. Tareling, with well-simulated wonder.
'You see, Larry, you who are poverty-stricken on over three thousand a year can hardly plumb the depths of real destitution,' said Alice. 'There is the poverty of hot joints and "frugal days of interlinear hash——"'
'Allie, whatever you do when you and Felix marry, do not have large joints,' said Stella gravely. 'I am confident that the happiness of the Australian household is more frequently wrecked by hash than any ethical point.'
'Well, I am studying the question. Perhaps I may one day publish a shilling cookery-book for young couples who ought not to have married.'
'Surely Felix's income must be considerable now. They say he is the best architect in the place,' said Laurette somewhat abruptly.
This laughing raillery about poverty did not commend itself to her in the least. It is mortifying, when one wants to make a girl feel how comparatively humble her prospects are, to find her treating the subject in a serio-comic vein.
'But then there are the younger children to provide for—quite dependent on Felix and Andrew,' returned Alice.
'Well, it's a pity you girls couldn't go in for a little division of poverty,' replied Laurette. 'Here is Stella's fiancé rolling in money.'
'As it happens, that young woman hasn't got a fiancé,' returned Stella quickly.
'No? You and Ted keep on such good terms, I always forget the affair was broken off,' said Laurette rather maliciously. 'But now for your visit, Stella.'
'I must talk it over with mother before making ultimate arrangements.'
'But we all know beforehand what that means. Your mother says, "Yes, darling," to all you propose. Pray, my dear, don't forget that I've known you from childhood. It was never a secret you were rather spoiled.'
Thus pressed, Stella said half hesitatingly:
'Well, if you let me come to you on my way to Lullaboolagana, without pledging myself to the length of the visit. But do you know that Dustiefoot insists on coming wherever I go?'
'Oh yes; and you always take Maisie when you pay a long visit—at least, someone said so the other day——'
'Yes,' put in Alice; 'we spare Maisie to Stella because she could never bear to brush her dresses or sew on bits of braid. It is a case of atavism. She has reverted to the only duchess that was in our family—more than three centuries ago.'
'That is curious,' said Stella, maintaining the mock gravity with which her sister spoke; 'for after twelve generations the proportion of blood of any one ancestor in only 1 in 2,048.'
'At any rate, it is settled you are to come—Dustiefoot, Maisie, and all,' said Laurette. 'By the way, how did you enjoy the Emberly ball?'
'Oh, immensely,' answered Stella; and then a quick wave of colour suffused her face, mounting even to her forehead.
'We enjoyed it "not wisely, but too well." We fancy there has been no nice weather since that ball was over,' said Alice, who sympathetically noted this uncompromising blush, and tried to attract Laurette's gleaming eyes from her sister's face.
But Laurette had in an eminent degree what