In a whitewashed parlour of "Beamish's Family Hotel" some few miles north of Geelong, three young women, in voluminous skirts and with their hair looped low over their ears, sat at work.

Books lay open on the table before two of them; the third was making a bookmark.

Two were fair, plump, rosy, and well over twenty; the third, pale-skinned and dark, was still a very young girl.

She it was who stitched magenta hieroglyphics on a strip of perforated cardboard.
"Do lemme see, Poll," said the eldest of the trio, and laid down her pen.

"You 'AVE bin quick about it, my dear." Polly, the brunette, freed her needle of silk and twirled the bookmark by its ribbon ends.