his breakfast, concerning the spot which the waitress would prefer were a young man going to take her out for the day.  He felt pleased with himself now, for not only did he like Nellie very much but she was attractive to behold, and he felt very certain that every man they passed envied him.  She had put on a little round straw hat, black, trimmed with dark purple velvet; in her hands, enclosed in black gloves, she carried a parasol of the same colour.

“Where would you like to go, Ned?” she answered, colouring a little as she heard her name in Mrs. Macanany’s hoarse voice, being told thereby that she and Ned were the topic of conversation among the jury of matrons assembled opposite.

“Anywhere you like, Nellie.”

“Don’t you think, Ned, that you might see a little bit of real Sydney?  Strangers come here for a few days and go on the steamers and through the gardens and along George-street and then go away with a notion of the place that isn’t the true one.  If I were you, Ned, right from the bush and knowing nothing of towns, I’d like to see a bit of the real side and not only the show side that everybody sees.  We don’t all go picnicking all the time and we don’t all live by the harbour or alongside the Domain.”

“Do just whatever you like, Nellie,” cried Ned, hardly understanding but perfectly satisfied, “you know best where to take a fellow.”

“But they’re not pleasant places, Ned.”

“I don’t mind,” answered Ned, lightly, though he had been looking forward, rather, to the quiet enjoyment of a trip on a harbour steamer, or at least to the delight of a long ramble along some beach where he thought he and Nellie might pick up shells.  “Besides, I fancy it’s going to rain before night,” he added, looking up at the sky, of which a long narrow slice showed between the tall rows of houses.

There were no clouds visible.  Only there was a deepening grey in the hard blueness above them, and the breathless heat, even at this time of day, was stifling.

“I don’t know that you’d call this a pleasant place,” he commented, adding with the frankness of an old friend:  “Why do you live here, Nellie?”

She shrugged her shoulders.  The gesture meant anything and everything.

“You needn’t have bothered sending me that money back,” said Ned, in reply to the shrug.

“It isn’t that,” explained Nellie.  “I’ve got a pretty good billet.  A pound a week and not much lost time!  But I went to room there when I was pretty hard up.  It’s a small room and was cheap.  Then, after, I took to boarding there as well.  That was pretty cheap and suited me and helped them.  I suppose I might get a better place but they’re very kind, and I come and go as I like, and—­” she hesitated.  “After all,” she went on, “there’s not much left out of a pound.”

“I shouldn’t think so,” remarked Ned, looking at her and thinking that she was very nicely dressed.