He looked startled as he watched the swaying crowd.  It certainly looked dangerous, if it was not difficult.  The gramophone was playing the “March of the Gladiators”; the mandolines were tinkling anything and the mouth-organ had given it up entirely, merely punctuating the first beat of every bar with a thin concussion of the bell.  Betty had sprinkled the floor with a slippery preparation she got from the store, called “ice-powder.”

“Be careful when you cross the floor.  It’s worse than ice, to make it easy for those who can’t dance.  You just cling to someone and slip if you don’t know any steps.  Some of them say their slip is a waltz:  others call it a gavotte, and some say it’s the tango.  Old Mike’s very definite that it’s a jig.  The great thing is to make the slip coincide with a groan from the gramophone.  Just watch a minute, and you’ll see that there is quite a lot of method in it.”

She looked round for Louis, who was in a corner with some of the miners.  By his flushed face, his high voice and hysterical laugh she guessed that she must try to keep him from seeing Kraill that night.  She never could be quite sure what he would do or say.

Mrs. Twist was pathetically honoured that the “gentleman from England” should have chosen her birthday for his visit, and Marcella left him with her.

“It’s a pity to be Martha to-night, Professor Kraill,” she said in a low voice.  “I want to be Mary—­”

She was gone before he could answer.

The noise had made Andrew cross and tired, and she put him to bed in the hammock under the gum trees, and hitched up her own hammock in the bedroom next to Louis’s.  She knew that he would be drunk to-night; experience had given her a plan of action.  She had to pretend to go to bed with him and stay with him until he was asleep.  Then she crept out into the open air beside the boy.

She tried to transform the storeroom into the semblance of a bedroom, but it did not occur to her to apologize for discrepancies; she would not have done so had the king come to visit her:  indeed, she considered that he had, for Kraill had always taken his place in her imagination, as she had told him, with heroes of romance.

When she got back to the Homestead everyone was ready for supper.  They had to get away early, for most of them had to walk the five miles to Klondyke.  The Professor seemed to be at home with the miners.  His air of intense interest that had so won Dr. Angus’ heart had immediately flattered and enslaved them all.  Before they said good night he had committed himself to visiting them all.  Marcella won a good deal of reflected glory by possessing him as friend.

“Are you tired of us?” she asked him after a while.

“I am very glad I won that toss!” he said.

“Which?”

“I tossed up whether to stay in Sydney or come here”—­he stopped sharp, for it seemed to him that she looked hurt.  He decided that, with Marcella, it would be better to be honest than pleasant.