These engineers and metal-workers seemed, on the whole, a much more cheerful set than the painters and cabinet-makers. Several times I did jobs for a large drapery and furniture-making establishment, mostly painting white furniture with little garlands and wreaths in Louis Seize style, or cupboards and boxes with pictures from nursery rhymes. I found the cabinet-makers—apart from the carpenters who work in larger and more airy premises—and the French polishers on the whole a rather anæmic and melancholy class of men; though among them, as among all other Australian workmen, I, an alien, and—in their sense of the word—a mere amateur, met with the greatest possible courtesy and kindness, finding them always ready to give me a helping hand, lend me materials, or pass on any small trade secrets that might benefit me; while, somehow or other, someone inevitably conjured up a cup of tea to help me through the long afternoon hours. They did seem long, too, for, though I worked far longer than eight hours a day in my own rooms, at most times twelve, and for one awful week, I remember, fifteen, I went from one thing to another, and moved about directing or teaching, or doing little homely odd jobs in between. Still, I liked the working in the shops or factories best, and certainly all my happiest days in Australia have been spent among other workpeople; while to this special firm—Messrs. Buckly and Nunn—I owe a special tribute of thanks for unfailing fairness and consideration. Before the great Women’s Exhibition I worked for some time with another firm, who gave me an equally free hand, paying me at the same rate, £1 a day, better than many a really skilful artist in London gets, and enabling me to live in clover while it lasted. Indeed, from only one firm in Melbourne did I meet with anything like unfairness. This was for one of the biggest pieces of decorative work I ever did—a frieze—for which the architect of the building for which it was intended arranged to pay £37, out of which, of course quite unknown to him, I got only £5 for my work, and £1 for the paint. In the cabinet-making trade, wood carvers and turners get on an average 54s. to 56s. a week, as do all other skilled cabinet-makers. Bricklayers average 10s. a day, and carpenters the same. Unskilled labourers are paid 6s. a day; quarrymen, 45s. to 54s. a week; electric-light fitters, 54s. a week; farriers, 48s.; compositors, 56s.; blacksmiths, 54s. to 72s.; smiths, 45s. to 52s.; fitters and turners in engineering works, 60s. to 66s.; nail-makers, 50s. to 70s.—rather different to the 2d. an hour the Lancashire women have been agitating for; but women do not make nails in Melbourne, nor do they make chains—or wear them either.