ned
family circle' for dinner," said Myra to her brother. "It is now six
o'clock; our luggage has gone up, and so, if you will come back for us
in half an hour, we will let you escort us there--to the envy of all the
male population of this horrid, dusty, noisy town."

"Very well," said Grainger with a laugh, "Mallard and I will contrive to
exist until then," and the two men went off into the billiard-room.

"Now, Miss Carolan," said the lively Myra, as she opened the door of
the sitting-room and carried in the table on which were the glasses,
champagne bottle, and ice, "we'll put these inside first. The sight of
that ice will make every man who may happen to see it and who knows Ted
come and introduce himself to me. Oh, this is a very funny country! I'm
afraid it rather shocked you to see me drinking champagne on an hotel
verandah in full view of passers-by. But, really, the whole town is
excited--it has gold-fever on the brain--and then all the men are so
nice, although their free and easy ways used to astonish me considerably
at first. But diggers especially are such manly men---you know what I
mean."

"Oh, quite. I know I shall like North Queensland. There were quite a
number of diggers on board the _Carea_, and one night we held a concert
in the saloon and I sang 'The Kerry Dance'--I'm an Irishwoman--and next
morning a big man named O'Hagan, one of the steerage passengers, came up
and asked me if I would 'moind acceptin' a wee bit av a stone,' and he
handed me a lovely specimen of quartz with quite two ounces of gold in
it. He told me he had found it on the Shotover River, in New Zealand.
I didn't know what to say or do at first, and then he paid me such a
compliment that I fairly tingled all over with vanity. 'Sure an' ye'll
take the wee bit av a stone from me, miss,' he said. 'I'm a Kerry man
meself, an' when I heard yez singin' "The Kerry Dance," meself and half
a dozen more men from the oold sod felt that if ye were a man we'd have
carried yez around the deck in a chair."

"How nice of him!" said Myra; "but they are all like that. Nearly every
one of my brother's men at Chinkie's Flat gave me something in the way
of gold specimens when I left there."

"Then," resumed Sheila, "in the afternoon _all_ the steerage passengers
sent me and the captain what they call a 'round robin,' and asked if he
would let them have a concert in the steerage, and if I would sing.
And we did have it--on the deck--and I had to s