Bella Barnes was going to marry a surveyor, a wildish young fellow, but a good one to work as ever was. She was going to chance him coming straight afterwards. He was a likely man to rise in his office, and she thought she’d find a way to keep him out of debt and drinking and gambling, too.

Well, in comes the Commissioner and his friends, very grand indeed, all dressed like swells always do in the evening, I believe, black all over, white tie, shining boots, white kid gloves, flower in their buttonhole, all regular. People may laugh but they did look different from the others—showed more blood like. I don’t care what they say, there is such a thing.

Close by the Commissioner, laughing and talking; was the two Mr. Dawsons: and—I saw Aileen give a start—who should come next, cheek by jowl with the police magistrate, whom he’d been making laugh with something he’d said as they came in, but Starlight himself looking like a regular prince—their pictures anyhow—and togged out to the nines like all the rest of ‘em. Aileen kept looking at him as he lounged up the ballroom, and I thought she’d fall down in a faint or bring herself to people’s notice by the wild, earnest, sad way she looked at him. However he’d got his clothes and the rest of it that fitted him like as if they’d been grown for him, I couldn’t think. But of course he’d made all that right when he went to Sydney, and had ‘em sent up with his luggage in Mr. Dawson’s drag.

Though he didn’t seem to notice anything, I saw that he knew us. He looked round for a moment, and smiled at Aileen.

“That’s a pretty girl,” he said to one of the young fellows:“evidently from the country. I must get introduced to her.”

“Oh, we’ll introduce you,” says the other man. “They’re not half bad fun, these bush girls, some of them.”