had once been as pretty as Elsie, but who had never had a tenth part of Elsie's brains and brightness, or of Ina's common sense. She looked a little draggled now, and had lost her hair and her teeth, and the badly fitting false teeth of the Leichardt's Town dentist gave her an artificial look.
"I shouldn't have minded about the jam if you had come back engaged to Frank Hallett," she said.
"But I haven't, mother, and there's an end of it," said Elsie; "and I don't see the remotest prospect of being engaged to anybody for a long time to come."
"It is your own fault," moaned Mrs. Valliant. "You have got the name of being a flirt and of encouraging men who are no use in the way of marrying. These town men never are."
"They are very good to dance with," said Elsie. "Don't worry, mother. If the worst comes to the worst, and nobody will marry me, I can always end up as a barmaid, you know. I've got attractive manners—to men, at any rate. At least so they say."
"And the women hate you; I hear that old cat, Lady Garfit, has been setting it about that Frank Hallett has thrown you over because you flirted so abominably with that new man, Blake."
Elsie flushed. "Lady Garfit is jealous, because Rose was out of it, and Frank Hallett has not thrown me over. Oh, mother, let us forget for one whole evening that my mission in life is to marry, and help me to look over my old ball dresses, and see what I can do with them for this winter."
They were terribly poor, the Valliants, and it was not surprising that Mrs. Valliant should wish to marry off Elsie. No one but Elsie and Ina knew how they had to pinch and save, and to what straits they were sometimes reduced in order that Mrs. Valliant might have a decent black silk, with a high and a square-cut bodice, in which to take her place among the Leichardt's Town ladies at such functions as called for her attendance. No one but Ina and Elsie knew how the girls used to toil in the mornings to get their house work done to have the afternoons free for their
