Phyllis is not like other girls. I think I may say, without a particle of vanity, that she is the very prettiest in Australia, at the least. There may be greater beauties at home--I don't know, it is so long since I was there; but if there be, I should like to see them. Her features are not classical, of course, and that dear little piquant suggestion of a cast in the left eye is a peculiarity, though it is not a defect, any more than are the freckles she gets in summer: these trifles of detail merely go to make the _tout-ensemble_ what it is--so charming that she has but to enter a room to eclipse every other woman in it. This being so, I was naturally anxious that she should marry, when she did marry, into her proper sphere, and not be thrown away upon a man unworthy of her. And I only took the most simple and necessary precaution for her safety when I limited my invitations to young fellows whom I could trust--like Spencer Gale. Tom says I never had a good word for Spencer Gale until he made his fortune in Broken Hills. It amuses Tom to make these reckless statements, and it doesn't hurt me in the least. I _always_ liked the boy, but any fair-minded person must have acknowledged that his change of circumstances had improved him--brushed him up, and brightened him in every way. It was not his wealth that induced me to throw him into my daughter's company, but his sterling personal qualities. A better son never walked, excepting my own dear Harry--that alone was enough for me; a good son never fails to make a good husband, as everybody knows. His sister was a friend and neighbour of mine, and I knew that he was staying with her. At one time all the family had lived here, Mr. Gale having Tom's fancy for amateur farming and market-gardening in his leisure hours. Spencer and Harry, both being clerks in Melbourne offices, used to go into town together of a morning; that was how we came to know them. But when Spencer had some shares given him which went to a ridiculous price directly afterwards, and when his money, by all sorts of lucky chances, bred money at such a rate that he was worth (they said) a quarter of a million in a twelvemonth, then they all left this out-of-the-way suburb for a big place in Toorak--all except Mary Gale, who married a poor clergyman before the boom. Mary's husband, Mr. Welshman, was the incumbent of our parish, and her good brother was not at all too grand to pay her visits at intervals, besides helping her to educate the children. Which proved conclusively that prosperity had not spoiled him.