"Are you always breaking yours? I thought your heart was pretty well
hardened now."

"When a man talks of his heart, you and Kate are thinking of loves
and doves, of course."

"I wasn't thinking of loves and doves, Harry," said Kate." I was
thinking how very hot it must have been to-day. We could only bear it
in the veranda by keeping the blinds always wet. I don't wonder that
you were troubled."

"That comes from heaven or Providence, or from something that one
knows to be unassailable, and therefore one can put up with it. Even
if one gets a sun-stroke one does not complain. The sun has a right
to be there, and is no interloper, like a free-selector. I can't
understand why free-selectors and mosquitoes should have been
introduced into the arrangements of the world."

"I s'pose the poor must live somewheres, and 'squiters too," said
Mrs. Growler, the old maid-servant, as she put a boiled leg of mutton
on the table. "Now, Mr. Harry, if you're hungered, there's something
for you to eat in spite of the free-selectors."

"Mrs. Growler," said the master, "excuse me for saying that you jump
to conclusions."

"My jumping is pretty well-nigh done," said the old woman.

"By no means. I find that old people can jump quite as briskly as
young. You have rebuked me under the impression that I was grudging