I put on my white dress and stole down. Gaddy was already there, and in swallow tails looked like an egg. I found out later that his nickname was “The Egg”. Mrs. Crasterton’s head and train promised smartly for what was hidden in the big shawl. Edmée was in her little wet-night dress. There was no trace of Derek, but there was present a small insipid young man with big ears. He was unmistakably infatuated with Edmée. There was also a man about six-foot-two in a violent check suit and long faded walrus moustache.

Mrs. Crasterton had apologised for him as a sort of cousin. She said relations were so huffy that she had to overlook his not being in evening dress, that he was leaving immediately after dinner. He talked in a self-important voice to Jemima, as he called her, and did not see me at all beyond a nod when introduced as “a little girl”. His theory was that people of his class, that meant SOCIETY’S and Jemima’s, should never touch politics except for what was in them. They should feather their nests and get out while the going was good.

When the meal was eaten Big Ears and Big Checks went to the smoking room with Gaddy. Edmée disappeared upstairs. Mrs. Crasterton had still more telephoning to do, and told me to remain in the drawing-room, as Lady Hobnob was going to run in and see me on her way to a ball at Admiralty House. I must not delay her, as it was kind of her to come.

I wrote in my diary with a fountain pen sent to me by a commercial traveller at Broken Hill, until Gad seated himself nearby with an odour of wine and the stuffed look peculiar to men with short necks and long appetites. My soul did not go out to him. Mrs. Crasterton came in for a moment and said that Edmée’s admirer was not of an old family, and she pointed out a dog-eared ornament and named the howling swell from whom it had descended.

“Stow that old rubbish, Sis,” said Gad testily. “The girl is as young as morning and as fresh as dawn. She doesn’t want to concern herself with anything but being herself and not getting spoiled. Age is no recommendation of an article if a new thing would be an improvement. If we are here only to degenerate and breed rotters and find out that old things were better, the sooner we throw up the sponge the better.”

I discerned an unexpected ally.

Mrs. Crasterton threw off her shawl to meet arrivals. I was abashed to be in close proximity. Her bosom was like two vast white puddings, her waist was sinfully compressed, she rocked on silly little heels, but she was as fashionable as Wheeler, the expert, could make lier. Lady Hobnob was as big as Mrs. Crasterton, but more flabby and spreading. She had her head wrapped in tulle with feathers that nodded precariously, but she was kind. I was sure she must be a muddler. (I had had a méchante idea that one bared one’s arms and chest to extend one’s physical beauty and increase feminine attraction, but the startling exposure of four or five old ladies dispelled this notion. Evening dress must be an obligation of aristocraticness.) The very pronounced human form au naturel looks so very pronounced that it would be less of a shock to respectable way-backs to begin EVENING DRESS SOCIETY among slender people. However, the lessons in breeding that I had undergone that day starched my own, and without a blink I continued a when-you-don’t-know-what-to-do-do-nothing stand.

Other ladies in grand dresses called for an hour on their way to the ball. They were surprised that I was such a child, and that I had nothing to say for myself. Some said what a pity it was that I would so soon be spoiled. Everyone asked for me, and Mrs. Crasterton said, “Here she is!” Many women kissed me: old gentlemen pinched or goggled and said kind or silly things. Then they settled to talk to Jemima and Gaddy about affairs of the day, and the gossip of Sydney. Some of them were judges, and some were barristers, and M.L.A.s, and there was a Chancellor, but I don’t know of what. Mrs. Crasterton beamed and said it was like old times.

Presently Edmée made her entry. Everyone saw it. She stood for a few minutes in the doorway. She was in a pale green satin dress with a gored skirt with a train and a bodice fitting like a glove. It had no sleeves and was cut very low. Her bosom seemed to rise out of creamy foam. She had a cape of the same satin trimmed with ostrich feathers, and it slipped off in the most exciting way. She languished and distributed her glances. There was a rush from the gentlemen to attend her: but she was true to me. She drew me down beside her where I sat raptly drinking her in. How proud I was when she put her arm around me!

Henry Beauchamp wondered how I’d act when I met girls that could rival me. Here was one who blotted me out, and I was enchanted with her. There was no jealousy in me. I forgot even to be envious; forgot that I was in a plain white dress with all my bath-room charms hidden. I was sorry for Big Ears’ hopeless passion for Edmée, and motioned him to come and sit on the other side of me on the couch on which we were sitting. In the crush that ensued around us, I slipped away without being missed. Behind a shoulder of the wall in the back of the long drawing-room I found Big Checks all by himself.

“Hullo!” he said. “You sneakin’ out of the ruck too?”

“Yes, I was only taking up space around Miss Actem. Isn’t she lovely?”

“A rather upstanding filly. Been a bit too long in the stable. She hangs around here tryin’ to bag old Gaddy. She’ll bag young Derek if he doesn’t keep his eyes skinned.”

What a poisonous old man! I knew him at once for a broken-down swell. The bush is full of such. Sometimes they are tramps, but other times they are tea-agents. There was a book-agent around ‘Possum Gully, the image of this gentleman, checks, moustache and all. When there is a position as Stock Inspector their relatives use INFLUENCE to get it for them.

“I meant to go after dinner, but Jemima said something about a girl who writes, comin’ tonight. I’d as soon have a performin’ bear about the place as a woman who writes. The bear’s performance would be more natural too,”

“Then why did you stay?”

“Thought I’d better see what the world is comin’ to. Now that women are to have votes, life won’t be worth livin’ much longer.”

“Do you think that women should not have any brains?”

“Brains! A woman with brains is a monstrosity.”

I never can understand why men are so terrified of women having special talents. They have no consistency in argument. They are as sure as the Rock of Gibraltar that they have all the mental superiority and that women are weak-minded, feeble conies; then why do they get in such a mad-bull panic at any attempt on the part of women to express themselves? Men strut and blow about themselves all the time without shame. In the matter of women’s brain power they organise conditions comparable to a foot race in which they have all the training and the proper shoes and little running pants, while women are taken out of the plough, so to speak, with harness and winkers still on them, and are lucky if they are allowed to start at scratch. Then men bellow that they have won the race, that women never could, it would be against NATURE if they did. Surely it is not brave to so fear fair play. No self-respecting woman could possibly respect men, no matter how strong an appetite she might have for them, but to be sorry for them, as some women pretend, is mawkish, and is carrying dissimulation too far.

Big Checks would put me on a level with a performing bear, and never know the alphabet of my language, but I could talk his pidgin while thinking about something else, so I indulged him on the subject of horses.

It was evident that he was a full bachelor. He lacked the mugginess of husbands and the air of false importance which they assume through the protection of their wives. Why women can be led astray by others’ husbands or have any traffic with them I cannot conceive.

“I heard about this girl,” I said.

“By jove, do you know her! Tell me what she is like.”

He was greedily interested for that sort of bachelor which the women don’t try to attract as compared with the sort that they do.

“I believe her book was meant as a joke, but people couldn’t see it. Her relations say that she is a silly goat and that her book is just like her.”

“I knew it. No nice girl would write a book.”

“I wish I could write one—only of course a much better one than this girl has done.”

“Oh, no, my dear, don’t be led astray by the false adulation and fuss about this minx. People come to look at her like a Punch and Judy show, but the kind of girl the world is in need of, the kind a man respects is one just like your pretty little self.”

Nevertheless he had not come to see her but the dreadful female who wrote.

“Me, pretty,” I scoffed. “My mother doesn’t say so.”

“Ah, you have a sensible mother. She wants to save you from conceit. You take it from me, and I’ve seen all the girls come out for the last twenty-five years, there’s not many could hold a candle to you if you were properly tricked out. You have a face that grows on a man—something that would make him come back and look a second time; and no paint or artificiality.”

“Think how lovely Miss Actem is,” I said to end his embarrassing exaggeration.

“Pooh! Your figure and complexion run her into the Harbor, and her eyes...”

“They’re glorious.”

“Go and look at your own. The way she ogles and throws hers about—I’m afraid, ‘pon me word, that they’ll drop out and I’ll have to pick ’em up.”

No doubt he had been snubbed by Edmée for getting in the way of more interesting cavaliers. He babbled of how the world would be dished by female suffrage. Women were never meant to express themselves politically; they were born to sacrifice themselves—that was their glory and their crown: as soon as women began to assert themselves a nation declined.

I hung on secretly to my faith that the greatest nations would always be those where women were freest. The United States and the British Empire were the two countries where women could march about alone without being assailed by the men, and even BIG CHECKS and LOUDER CHECKS would agree that the English are the greatest race on earth, and themselves the most wonderful men.

Mrs. Crasterton found me as she came through to give some order about the refreshments. “Dear me, Obadiah,” she remarked, “was it you that abducted the guest of the evening? Everyone wants to talk to you, Sybylla. You must not hide yourself.”

BIG CHECKS stood up and said, “I can’t wait any longer for this performin’ bear”. He grunted as if he had said something smart and funny. “I’ve enjoyed myself so much with you that she would spoil the taste in my mouth. Look here, don’t you go worryin’ because you haven’t any brains, me dear: You’re perfect as you are.”

“I don’t worry for lack of brains,” I said demurely.

“That’s right, you leave brains to this performin’ bear with long teeth, and a thick waist, and about ten feet high.” He was again so pleased with his joke that I laughed at him, and he shook my hand very friendlily and went out by the hind door, took his cane and hat and let himself out.

Mrs. Crasterton, Gaddy, Edmée and I were finally left before the dying fire.

“Well, my dear, you are a huge success,” Mrs. Crasterton said to me. “I hope your dear little head won’t be turned by being the lion of the hour. Everyone has invited me to bring you to lunch or afternoon tea. People whom I had lost sight of since Papa died, came tonight, and smart people who have arisen since my young days have telephoned that they must meet you. Dear old Lady Hobnob is so taken with you that I am to take you to her big dinner tomorrow night and you are to spend the night with her. The literary people and artists are clamoring for you like the hungry lions at the zoo, but I don’t approve of the bohemians: they have dangerous political views and are loose in their morals.”

It was not disguised from me that my good behaviour had been a surprise. I had not shown the shock of disappointment on finding that people who had enjoyed opportunities of education, travel, “contact” and refinement, which had long been debarred me owing to indigence, were only like this. There weren’t any but Derek and Edmée who took my eye, and I heard Gaddy having quite a row with his sister about Edmée.

I sat by my window looking on the city across the Harbor for a long time. It all seemed unreal. A myriad lights shone like misty jewels across the balmy water where the ferry boats flitted like floating fires. It was all so beautiful that I resented more tensely than ever that so much of my life had been cramped into the ugly environs of ‘Possum Gully.

Edmée was up betimes next morning. I heard her talking to the others as I approached. “I was in hopes she would be more the enfant terrible, but she is too correct to be entertaining.”

“Wait till she comes out of her shell,” said Gaddy.

“I like her affection, and she is not a troublesome guest,” said Mrs. Crasterton. “Professor Jonathan says she promises more genius than anyone in the Colonies today, and Lady Hill says she would take Professor Jonathan’s word before anyone’s. He is a really cultured Englishman, and it is a pleasure to hear him say ninety-nine.”

“Go on, Sis!” said Gaddy good-humoredly, “He says nainty-nain.”

Hi-tiddly-hi-ti-hi!

I was all on tip-toe for the dinner of Lady Hobnob. The Hobnobs were described by one of the English guests of the “at home” night as able “to do things rather well for the Colonies.” This meant that they had the money and EXPERIENCE to give dinners of many courses including decayed game and several kinds of wine served by the regulation number of imported flunkeys.

The whole toot was going to this dinner. We went a little early so that my host could have an additional word with me. He became noisy on finding that I was the daughter of good old............