practically a sinecure as her pupils passed beyond the sphere of the
schoolroom. Perhaps George Osgood, father of John Osgood, and owner of
Wandenong, did not make an allowance to Barbara Golding for her services
as counsellor and confidant of his family; but neither did he subtract
anything from her earnings in those infrequent years when she journeyed
alone to Sydney on those mysterious visits which so mightily puzzled the
good people of Wandenong. The boldest and most off-hand of them,
however, could never discover what Barbara Golding did not choose to
tell. She was slight, almost frail in form, and very gentle of manner;
but she also possessed that rare species of courtesy which, never
declining to fastidiousness nor lapsing into familiarity, checked all
curious intrusion, was it ever so insinuating; and the milliner and
dressmaker was not less self-poised and compelling of respect than the
governess and confidant.

In some particulars the case of Louis Bachelor was similar. Besides
being the Post, Telegraph, and Customs Officer, and Justice of the Peace
at Rahway, he was available and valuable to the Government as a
meteorologist. The Administration recognised this after a few years of
voluntary and earnest labour on Louis Bachelor's part. It was not,
however, his predictions concerning floods or droughts that roused this
official appreciation, but the fulfilment of those predictions. At
length a yearly honorarium was sent to him, and then again, after a
dignified delay, there was forwarded to him a suggestion from the Cabinet
that he should come to Brisbane and take a more important position. It
was when this patronage was declined that the Premier (dropping for a
moment into that bushman's jargon which came naturally to him) said,
irritably, that Louis Bachelor was a "old fossil who didn't know when
he'd got his dover in the dough," which, being interpreted into the slang
of the old world, means, his knife into the official loaf. But the