Two rooms had been combined to make a ballroom — a piece of grandeur even Ezekiel hadn’t imagined, with a frieze of rosebuds and cherubs and a floor so highly polished that Clancy found the boot-boy sliding there on his bottom, and thus shining his trousers into the bargain, and gave him a gentle cuff on the ear (a very gentle one, just enough to make sure the boy did not try it again and find himself dismissed by Grange).

Mrs Hanger the cook–housekeeper was soon gone — a gin drinker, it seemed. She was replaced by a Mrs Robinson, and a small fierce Frenchman who served meals exquisitely presented and took over ordering the wines and other liqueurs from Grange, who was half offended, half relieved.

The house now had footmen, kitchen maids, chars who did not live in ‘to do the rough’ and so who did not sully the respectability of the servants’ hall, and two carefully chosen chambermaids, Irish orphans sent to the colony as it was cheaper than feeding them in their institution but, as Flora said, within six months they’d lost their deplorable accents, learned to wash and were loyal and hard working.

Clancy even had a valet, he who had been dressing himself since he was two years old and shaving himself since he was sixteen and had only peach fuzz yet to scrape. But this new life required him to shave twice a day, not once or twice a week, as well as multiple changes of clothes each day: outfits for morning, afternoon, evening and each activity, from the decorous pre-breakfast rides together to the balls at Government House.

He needed a valet now almost as much as Flora needed Sarah to arrange her hair, button her dresses and boots and lay out the appropriate costumes, as well as arrange for the dressmakers to follow the illustrations of the latest Paris fashions, or take the measurements for the most special gowns to be made in Paris and altered as necessary on their arrival.

Golden years, when Clancy looked back on them: carriages arriving, leaving; cards left on the silver salver by the door; dinners at Government House with every visiting dignitary, for who could be more suitable to invite than the Honourable Flora Clancy? And where ‘Lady’ Flora went, her husband must go too.

Clancy had expected to be bored. He wasn’t. The Government House visitors spoke of a wider world: of politics; of new farm machinery, for many of them too owned property and, like him, divided their time between country estates and Sydney, or even property in England or Matabeleland or South Africa. He spent much of his time talking with squatters’ sons like himself — most, but not all, with more acceptable lineages. They might not be close friends, even the ones he had been at school with — he never quite felt one of them and not because he felt ashamed of his background — but he enjoyed their company.