anding behind a bar
and serving out drinks and grinning at a lot of goods that ought to be
at home with their families,--and that was a bit of a facer. Then she
said it was only the ugly old women who wanted to shriek round and get
rights,--that men would give the young pretty ones all they wanted
without asking! Of all the old black gin ideas, I always think that
the terriblest. A nice state of affairs, if people couldn't get honest
civilised rights without being young and pretty; and _the fools_!"
said the girl heatedly, "can't they look round and see how long the
beauty and youth business will work! 'Men,' she says, 'ought to rule;
they're the stronger vessel.'" And Dawn gave inimitable mimicry of
Miss Jimmeny of the pub. "If you take my tip for it, those girls that
sing out that men are the stronger vessel are the sort that have a
dishcloth of a husband, and never let him off a string."

This attitude of mind was one of Dawn's distinctive characteristics.
Having that beauty, which in the enslaved condition of women has
always been an unfair asset to the possessor, to the exclusion of
worthier traits, she was not like most beauties, content to sit down
and trade upon it, but had wholesomer, honester, workaday ideals in
regard to the position of her sex.

She was going to Sydney in the morning for her second singing lesson,
and as Ernest, by a strange coincidence, happened to have business
that would take him on the same journey by the same train, I
accompanied him to the gate to warn him against inadvertently
divulging that I had been an actress by trade.

"I want to take you into my confidence," I said, as we passed several
naked cedar-trees, and halted in the shelter of some fine peppers that
grew to perfection in this valley, where I related the trouble I had
had to bring the old lady round to the idea of Dawn's singing lessons,
and mentioned the girl's ambition regarding the stage.

"Now," I continued, "if the old dame were to discover I had been on
the stage, she would think I was leading Dawn to the devil, and would
not credit that no one is more anxious than I am to save her from the
footlights, or that the best way to stave her off is this training.
My secret ambition regarding her," I said, critically observing the
strong knobby profile, "is that within the next five years she should
marry some nice youngster with means to place her in a setting
befitting her intelligence and beauty."

"Have you got an