mitable and
exasperated caricature from the folds of her silk kimono. "Good
heavens! to give a man like that an amateur concert like ours! Do you
know, they say he is the best amateur tenor in Australia, and his wife
was a comic opera singer before she married--so a girl was telling me
where I get my singing lessons. You'd think even the galoots of
Noonoon wouldn't be so leather-headed but they'd know their length
well enough not to make fools of themselves in this way! _I_ know; why
can't they know too? They like these things themselves, and think
others ought to like them too. What do they want to be licking
Walker's boots at all for? We all voted and worked for him; that was
enough! It will just show you the way people will crawl to a bit of
money! Oh dear, how Walker must be grinning in his sleeve! I _won't_
sing for them!"

But she was not to escape so easily. A member of the committee asked
grandma "Would she allow her granddaughter to contribute a solo?"

"Of course!" said the old lady. "Ain't I getting her singing lessons
to that end?" and down went the girl's name on the programme, and
there was war in the Clay household on that account.

"I can't sing yet," protested Dawn. "I can't sing in the old style,
and can't manage the new style yet."

"Rubbish!" said grandma, who could not be got to grasp the intricacies
of voice production. "What am I payin' good money away for? It's near
three months now, and nothing to show for it yet. If you can't sing
now, you ought to give it best at once; and if you can't sing a song
for Mr Walker, and show him you've got a better voice than some, I
think it common-sense to stop your lessons at the end of the quarter."

"My teacher wouldn't let me sing."

"And who's the most to do with you, your teacher or me, pray? Who's
_he_ to say when you shan't sing or the other thing?" and thus she
decided the point; but Dawn each night dwelt upon the trouble, while I
sought to comfort her.

"It is best to sing to the people who know all about singing. They
will see you have a good voice and appreciate it far more than could
the ignorant."

A fortnight had to elapse before the date of the concert, and during
that time Carry's successor arrived in the form of a stout "general,"
as Dawn averred she had sufficient companion in me, and that a kitchen
woman was preferable to a lady help.

The pruning of a portion of the vineyard, which had been delayed by
electioneering matters till