Already we had met no end of poets—the big fellows one at a time, that is if Mrs. Crasterton thought them “nice” enough to be exposed to my unsophistication. We had the damned little twinkling stars in constellations at tea to produce a stellary effect.

“Big Ears doesn’t look like a poet,” I exclaimed. Messrs Lawson, Paterson, Brady, Quinn, Ogilvie and others set a high standard of physique which outclassed poor little Big Ears.

“Look like a poet! He looks like a greengrocer’s assistant who—who teaches Sunday School,” ended Derek.

Gaddy had a stunning blue sash waiting for me. I longed to own it but had not been educated to receive things. Mine was the independence which loves to lavish gifts upon others but squirms at receiving them. The sash was so long and my middle inches so few that I had to put the sash twice around me, and then it covered me to the armpits, and the ends of the big bow fell to the hem of my skirt. The cook, who was a darling, had done up my little dress and it was all fresh and glistening. Gaddy said that the sash was no more than a box of chocolates, and with a laugh added, that I could at least borrow it while I was in Sydney if I wouldn’t take it altogether. I consented to wear it until I could write and ask Ma if I could keep it.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

MY TRUE FRIEND.

Being too young and too poor to make a formal debut, I was an anomaly. Other youngsters as poor as I already had their shoulders to the working wheel; those of financial status were acquiring extra polish to enhance their value in the matrimonial market. I had not ‘come out’, but was a chicken that walked around inside its shell—a good simile, seeing my lack of an evening dress. I was treated like a visitor of thirty or fifty years of age. Without any fuss or feathers I was just tucked in at dinners and luncheons, and people called to see me by the score. Quite two-thirds were men and half of them over forty. It was rare that there was a youngster of my own youth amid the throng. A great many talked about nothing; others exclaimed, “Oh, how interesting!” People were not described as pretty or clever or entertaining or queer but as interesting. I grew very sick of this description of myself, but had quickly perceived that it was wiser to think what I said than to say what I thought.

I met numerous men, each of whom had written “that beautiful thing” or “this beautiful thing,” each thing according to some authority, being the best thing that had been done since Pope or Dryden or Keats, and the authors designated as the Australian Poe, or Burns or Milton, I was in an uncomfortable predicament owing to my ignorance of all this Australian genius, but I had no difficulty in getting the geniuses on to the subject of their own supremacy and thus hiding my own inferiority.