"Polly, come and have a look round, and give me your advice, will you? My fellow says he's got all the luggage up, and he wants to know where to put some of the new things."
Mr. Anthony Churchill would have felt himself insulted if you had called his "fellow" a valet. Australian gentlemen don't keep valets. The person in question had certainly filled that office in England, where his master had picked him up, but was now merely a sort of private male housemaid of superior quality, who waited on his employer in the East Melbourne chambers, and made him more comfortable than anybody else could have done. When he was away travelling, Maude took on his servant as an extra footman, in order to guard him against the seductions of other wealthy bachelors who were known to covet him; but when Tony was at home, Jarvis was his indispensable attendant. Mary Oxenham used to say that Jarvis was the main cause of that celibacy which she could not but deplore in a man of thirty-five, who could so well afford a wife and family.
"Yes, dear," she said, in response to his proposal; "I shall be delighted." She rose from the Toorak luncheon-table to dress for the expedition.
"Oh, Tony, you are not going away?" cried Mrs. Churchill, prettily aghast. "When I have hardly had a word with you! And when you know it is my day at home, and I can't come with you! Mary, it's very nasty and selfish of you, to carry him off and keep him all to yourself—especially when he has been in town the whole morning."
"I'll come back to dinner," he said soothingly. "And we'll have a game of billiards together in the evening, if you like."
"But I want you now, Tony! All the world is coming this afternoon, just on purpose to see you, and I did so want to show you off."
"The very reason, madam, why I go. I don't like being shown off."
"But you know what I mean, Tony—you can do exactly what you like—go away and smoke, or anything. And there are several new girls—pretty girls—whom you haven't seen before."
"Pretty girls have ceased to interest me very much. I've seen such a lot of them."
"You are a nasty, horrid, disagreeable boy! I suppose I have ceased to interest you—that's what you'd like to say if you weren't too polite."