The first moment we had in private she took opportunity of saying—
"I think I'll go over to Grosvenor's with you this evening, but not to tea. I'll go over to bring you home, if you'll help me make some excuse to get out of going rowing with 'Dora.'"
"Why not come to tea? that would be sufficient excuse."
"Oh, but they try to ape the swells, and grandma doesn't like them; but I'll be sure to go for you after it, and that will save Mr Ernest coming round with you."
I thanked her, though her escort was not at all necessary, seeing that instead of saving Ernest it would only make his presence surer. There being nothing else to do during the afternoon, I awaited the time of setting out for the Grosvenor's, who tried to ape the swells—the swells of Noonoon! These being, as far as I could gather, the doctors, the lawyer, a couple of bank managers on a salary somewhere about £250 per annum, the Stip. Magistrate, and one or two others—surely an ordinarily harmless and averagely respectable section of the community, in aping whom one would be in little danger of being called upon to act up to an etiquette as intricate and tyrannous as that in use at court.
In the old days the town had been the terminus of the train, and it had squatted at the foot of the mountains, while strings of teams carried the goods up the great western road out to Bathurst and beyond, to Mudgee, Dubbo, and Orange. Nearly all the old houses—grandma's and Grosvenor's among them—had been hotels in those days, when the miles had been ticked off by the square stones with the Roman lettering, erected by our poor old convict pioneers, who blazed many a first track. Every house had found sufficient trade in giving D.T.'s to the burly, roystering teamsters who lived on the roads, dealt in no small quantities, and who did not see their wives and sweethearts every week in the year.
As the afternoon advanced, true to appointment, "Dora" Eweword arrived to take Dawn for a row. His chin was red from the razor, and he looked well in a navy-blue guernsey brightened by a scarlet tie knotted at the open collar, displaying a columnar throat which, if strength were measured by size, announced him capable of supporting not only a Dawn, but a Sunset. He sat on an Austrian chair, for which he was some sizes too large and too substantial, and reddened as he laughed and talked with Carry, till I appeared and spent some time in talking and admiring his appearance until Dawn came upon the scene.
"Well, Dawn," he said, "I'm waiting for this row; are you ready?"
Dawn glanced at me.
"Dawn has promised to chaperon me to-night," I said. Dawn decamped.