"Not strictly appropriate to Australia, my dear fellow, but I couldn't stand the papers they showed me. I have sent home for something a little more artistic. It should be parrots, of course, or satin-birds, and, by the way, those beggars of satin-birds have gobbled up all our loquats—but my imagination wouldn't soar, and Ina is not inventive. I'm trainin' her faculties, but by slow degrees."
Ina flushed again. Between the flushes she was—so Hallett noticed—alarmingly pale. And surely she had got thinner. But she had taken ever so much pains over the arrangement of the drawing-room, which was in truth exceedingly pretty and full of English odds and ends, from a portrait of Lady Waveryng in full court dress to an an tiered stag's head over the doorway. Ina was proud of her charming room, though she gave Elsie all the credit of the arrangement. "It was always Elsie who did the prettinesses," she said, "whether it was in our ball dresses or our parlour. Elsie has only to put her hand to a thing and it gets somehow the stamp of herself. I was never good for anything but the useful things."
Lord Horace sat down to the piano, which was a fine instrument and was littered with music, and struck a few chords. "You must hear my newest thing. It's one of those spirited bush ballads of William Sharp's, and I've set it to music. Ina and I sat up till all hours last night practisin' it."
"Yes," interjected Elsie, "and you made poor Ina faint by keeping her standing so long."
"I wanted her to have some port wine," answered Lord Horace, "and she wouldn't. It was her fault, wasn't it, Ina, dear?"
"Yes, it was my fault," said Ina. "I didn't take the port wine in time."
"Well, never mind," said Lord Horace, "she shall have some port wine now to make up." He rushed off and brought the wine, which he made her swallow in spite of her protests. That was Lord Horace's way. A glass of port wine for a woman, and a brandy and soda for a man, were
