e,
and anointed her, poor little nose most carefully with the
greasy mixture, lying all night on her back to prevent it
rubbing off on the pillow.

Once Pip had forced his way into demand a few stitches for his
braces which had split, and she had been compelled to wrap her
whole face hastily up in a towel and declare she had violent
neuralgia, and he must go to Esther or one of the servants. Had
he seen and known the cause there would have been no end to the
teasing.

Nowadays Meg spent a great deal of time in her bedroom, that she
had all to herself while Judy was away. In its privacy she
trimmed and retrimmed her hats, altered her dresses, read her
novels, and sat in front of the looking-glass with her hair down,
dreaming of being quite grown up and in love. For just now both
to Aldith, and herself that state of life seemed the only one
altogether lovely and desirable. Meg used to curl herself up in a
big easy-chair that had drifted to her room because its springs
were broken, and dream long, beautiful, hopeless dreams of a lover
with "long black lashes and a soldierly carriage." Of course it
was highly reprehensible to have such thoughts at the tender age
of sixteen, but then the child had no mother to check that erring
imagination, and she was a daughter of the South.

Australian girls nearly always begin to think of "lovers and
nonsense," as middlefolks call it, long before their English aged
sisters do. While still in the short-frock period of existence,
and while their hair is still free-flowing, they take the keenest
interest in boys--boys of neighbouring schools, other girls' brothers,
young bank clerks, and the like. Not because they would be good
playmates, but because they look at them in the light of possible
"sweethearts." I do not say English girl children are free from this.
By no means; in every school there may be found one or two this way
inclined, giggling, forward young things who want whipping and
sending to play cricket or dolls again. But in this land of
youthfulness it is the rule more frequently than the exception, and
herein lies the chief defect of the very young Australian girl.
She is like a peach, a beautiful, smooth, rich peach, that has come
to ripeness almost in a day, and that hastens to rub off the soft,
delicate bloom that is its chief charm, just to show its bright,
warm colouring more clearly. Aldith had, to her own infinite
satisfaction, brushed away her own "bloom