. She herself, of course, was always the foremost figure,
the handsomest woman, the best-dressed, the most admired; for Ellen
Harriott, though only a girl, and a friendless governess at Kuryong,
was not inclined to put herself second to anyone. Having learnt from
her father's papers that he was of an old family, she considered herself
anybody's equal. Her brain held a crazy enough jumble of ideas, no
doubt; but given a strong imagination, no experience, and omnivorous
reading, a young girl's mind is exactly the place where fantastic ideas
will breed and multiply. She went about with Mrs. Gordon to the small
festivities of the district, and was welcomed everywhere, and deferred
to by the local settlers; she had yet to know what a snub meant; so
the world to her seemed a very easy sort of place to get along in. The
coming of the heiress was as light over a trackless ocean. Here was
someone who had seen, known, and done all the things which she herself
wished to see, know, and do; someone who had travelled on the Continent,
tobogganed in Switzerland, ridden in Rotten Row, voyaged in private
yachts, hunted in the shires; here was the world at last come to her
door--the world of which she had read so much and knew so little.

On the second morning after Miss Grant's arrival, that young lady turned
up at breakfast in a tailor-made suit with short skirt and heavy boots,
and announced her intention of "walking round the estate;" but as
Kuryong--though only a small station, as stations go--was, roughly, ten
miles square, this project had to be abandoned. Then she asked Hugh if
he would have the servants mustered. He told her that the two servants
were in the kitchen, but it turned out that she wanted to interview all
the station hands, and it had to be explained that the horse-driver was
six miles out on the run with his team, drawing in a load of bark to
roof the hay shed, and that Harry Warden was down at the drafting yards,
putting in a new trough to hold an arsenical solution, through which the
sheep had to tramp to cure their feet; and that everybody else was away
out on some business or other. But the young lady stuck to her point,
and had the groom and the wood-and-water boy paraded, they being the
only two available. The groom was an English importation, and earned
her approval by standing in a rigid and deferential attitude, and saying
"Yes, Miss," and "No, Miss," when spoken to; but the wood-and-water boy
stood with his