catch omnibuses or take the Tube, dressed in garden-party finery--well
it's all too disproportionate and tiresome.'

Mrs Gildea laughed. 'You must remember that I am out of all your fine
social business--except when I go as a reporter or look on from the
upper boxes.'

'It's abominable: it's stifling,' exclaimed Lady Biddy, 'it kills all
the best part of one. You know I've tried time after time to strike out
on my own individual self, but I've always been brought back again by
my hopeless, hopeless lack of practical knowledge of how to earn a
livelihood. The one gift I'd inherited wasn't good enough to be of any
use--If my mother had only left me the whole of her voice, I'd have
been an opera-singer. But I don't think I could have stood the drudgery
--and I should have hated the publicity of it all. . . . Joan, how did
you ever manage to make yourself independent?'

'By drudging,' said Mrs Gildea dryly. 'Besides, I was born differently.
And I was brought up with practical people.'

'Mr McKeith, for instance. He told me about his having been what he
called a "cattle new-chum" on your father's station.'

'He wasn't exactly a "new-chum." His father had owned a sheep-station
up in the unsettled districts. There was a tragedy--the place was sold
up when Colin was a boy. He wanted to learn how we did things further
south--and besides, he was left without a penny--that's how he came
to be with us.'

'Oh! . . . anyway, he's practical. But it isn't that side of him that