'Still, I suppose you will hardly retire to the wilds of Kannawijera when your relatives begin to reign at Government House?' said Alice, taking up the thread of conversation as she presided at the tea-tray.
'No; not this coming season, at any rate. We had to give up our house at Yarra Yarra; they raised the rent so atrociously. But we have secured a smaller one at Toorak, with the principal rooms en suite; almost all the partitions in folding-doors, that can be pushed back in the most wonderful way. Just like one of those knives—at least, they look like knives, but when you open the handle it turns into corkscrews, and toothpicks, and glove-buttoners, besides several blades. Everyone says Melbourne will be awfully full by May; so we caught time by the forelock, and took this house from November. But we don't pay a penny more than if we waited later. It is to be a most brilliant season, everyone says. And now, Stella, I want to arrange about your long-promised visit.'
'Oh, you are very kind,' said Stella.
'Don't say that: it's a bad omen. Always before when I asked you to come, you said, "You are very kind," and didn't turn up. It's no use coming for a couple of weeks, like the girls who come from the wilds of the Bush for a birthday ball, and don't know a soul but a few lanky men in split gloves, who don't waltz, and huddle up together behind the doors.'
'Ah, Laurette, you had better think twice before you are burdened through part of a brilliant season with a country cousin like me,' said Stella, laughing merrily at the picture called up by Laurette.
'I suppose it would be no use asking you to come as well, Allie, just for a couple of weeks?' said Mrs. Tareling graciously.
Allie raised her hands in mock despair.
'How can you ask? I am in training to keep a house on nine or ten pounds a week, and save out of that for a rainy day.'
'Oh, how very romantic! But surely no rainier day can come than nine or ten pounds a week?' said Mrs. Tareling, with well-simulated wonder.
'You see, Larry, you who are poverty-stricken on over three thousand a year can hardly plumb the depths of real destitution,' said Alice. 'There is the poverty of hot joints and "frugal days of interlinear hash——"'