there,
she'd pretend to be much startled, and say that she thought all the men
had gone out, and make as though she was going to clear; and someone 'd
jump up and give her a chair, while someone else said, 'Come in, Miss
Brown! come in! Don't let us frighten you. Come right in, and have
your breakfast before it gets cold.' So she'd flutter a bit in pretty
confusion, and then make a sweet little girly-girly dive for her chair,
and tuck her feet away under the table; and she'd blush, too, but I
don't know how she managed that.

"I know another trick that women have; it's mostly played by private
barmaids. That is, to leave a stocking by accident in the bathroom for
the gentlemen to find. If the barmaid's got a nice foot and ankle, she
uses one of her own stockings; but if she hasn't she gets hold of
a stocking that belongs to a girl that has. Anyway, she'll have one
readied up somehow. The stocking must be worn and nicely darned; one
that's been worn will keep the shape of the leg and foot--at least
till it's washed again. Well, the barmaid generally knows what time the
gentlemen go to bath, and she'll make it a point of going down just as
a gentleman's going. Of course he'll give her the preference--let her go
first, you know--and she'll go in and accidentally leave the stocking
in a place where he's sure to see it, and when she comes out he'll go in
and find it; and very likely he'll be a jolly sort of fellow, and when
they're all sitting down to breakfast he'll come in and ask them to
guess what he's found, and then he'll hold up the stocking. The barmaid
likes this sort of thing; but she'll hold down her head, and pretend
to be confused, and keep her eyes on her plate, and there'll be much
blushing and all that sort of thing, and perhaps she'll gammon to be
mad at him, and the landlady'll say, 'Oh, Mr. Smith! how can yer? At the
breakfast table, too!' and they'll all laugh and look at the barmaid,
and she'll get more embarrassed than ever, and spill her tea, and make
out as though the stocking didn't belong to her."

No Place for a Woman

He had a selection on a long box-scrub siding of the ridges, about half
a mile back and up from the coach road. There were no neighbours that
I ever heard of, and the nearest "town" was thirty miles away. He grew
wheat among the stumps of his clearing, sold the crop standing to a
Cockie who lived ten miles away, and had some surplus sons; or, some
seasons, he reaped it b