For the most part even the best of them refuse to call you “ma’am.” It is, “Hey, you there,” if they wish to attract your attention, and “All right” in response to any order. A little less in the rough, and they repeat your name every moment, till you are sick of the very sound of it. One woman I know, who remonstrated with her maid on the constant reiteration of “Mrs. —” was met with the response that if she was Mrs. — she ought not to mind being called so, and if she was not, she ought to be ashamed of herself! But I have strayed far from the subject of the chambers and their inhabitants, of which, indeed, a whole book might be written. One sees the cheery, independent-looking girls walking, with that characteristic swing of the hips, along the passages, or hurrying to their work through the sunny streets; but this is all the brightest side of the picture, to which there is, as in all pictures true to life, a reverse side. Even here there are not always billets to go round; a girl may lose her situation, and not get another at once, and then the primus roars less frequently, and there is no odour of bacon or sausages mingled with the kerosene. The door is kept jealously closed. Sometimes the men from the shops which let out furniture on the hire system come and fetch it away. The inhabitant of the room tells you jauntily that she is moving, and that it is not worth while carting furniture about; but she stays on, with lips that every day grow whiter and more persistently smiling, while you meet her in the street during business hours, trying to look very busy and full of affairs. Some girls will talk of their position; they are “out of a billet”; they are “awfully hard up,” and one need not fear greatly for those who can do this. We have all been in the same box, and are only too ready to give her a meal here and a meal there; to lend her a lounge-chair by way of a bed, till something turns up, and help out her scanty wardrobe, if she wants to appear particularly smart and prosperous when interviewing some possible employer. But it is those who do not and will not complain who are the difficult ones to deal with. One such girl, I remember, was found by the caretaker—when the busy people about her at last began to realize that they had not seen her go in and out of her room for some time—lying on the floor behind the locked door, as nearly dead as any woman could be, from sheer want—starvation, to put it bluntly—though there was not a single woman in the building who would not have helped her, if only the real state of things had ever been guessed at; for the uncharitableness of the Australian woman is, for the most part, verbal; they will abuse you like a pickpocket, but, while they will not leave you a shred of character, they will literally strip themselves in other ways that you may be clothed.