Then on Sunday mornings there is profound peace hanging over the building till well over nine o’clock, when the primus smell begins to be replaced by a distinct odour of ironing proceeding from every girl’s room for about an hour before she starts off—with flying white veil, crisp muslin skirts and blouse, long white washing gloves and beflowered hat—for a day by the sea or in the country with her “boy,” and another girl and her “boy”—the usual quartette. No wonder that these girls are more fearless-looking, healthier, brighter, and less neurotic than their fellows at home; for, apart from the greater facilities for fresh air and cheap, healthy amusements which they enjoy, they are better paid, a typist with a machine of her own getting half a crown a thousand words; while, if she is any good, she can always demand £2 a week in an office, with extra pay for overtime. The same thing holds good in every branch of women’s work, the domestic servants demanding, and getting, higher and higher wages every year. In Melbourne it is no good trying to get a servant by merely stating your requirements at a registry-office, and asking that a likely girl should be sent out to see you. On the contrary, it is the mistresses who line the waiting-rooms at the offices. They come early and stay late, often bringing books with them, and only slipping out for a hurried meal when they are quite certain that every possible domestic is comfortably enjoying her dinner at home, or in some restaurant. If it is very hot or wet, no maids turn up at all, though the ladies still flock to town by each early tram and train; a wistful-eyed and weary host, so evidently bent on that all-absorbing quest that one gets after a time to recognize them at first glance as servant-hunters. When a smiling and self-satisfied young woman is brought into the room by the harassed person who runs the office, and introduced to some eager mistress, all the other ladies glare at the possibly successful candidate for the girl’s favour, and meanwhile smile at her in the most beckoning and easy-going way; though even when she has thrown the glove, so to speak, they all know that she will not have the faintest compunction in breaking her agreement. These are a few of the questions a mistress may have put to her:—Does she keep a piano for the maids? If not, are they allowed to practise in the drawing-room? Are there any children?—an unforgivable sin in the eyes of a Melbourne domestic; as one hopeless lady said to me, after many days of weary waiting:—“They expect us to put out the work and kill our children.” Is she allowed every evening out, and half a day a week, and a whole day a month, and every Sunday? And is she expected to wear a cap?