He would call for the rent, and spend half the morning fixing a tap for Mrs Brown, instead of calling in the plumber; he would make a special journey to the other end of Sydney for Mrs Smith, to prove that he had a nose for bargains.
Mrs Grimes forgot with the greatest ease that her neighbours were made of the same clay as herself, but she never forgot that she had married a bank manager, and she never forgave Dad for lowering her pride to the dust.

True, she was only the governess at Nullah Nullah station when Dad married her, but her cold aristocratic features had given her the pick of the neighbouring stations, and Dad was reckoned a lucky man when he carried her off.

It was her fine, aquiline features and a royal condescension in manner that had won her the title of "Duchess" in this suburb of workmen.

She tried to be affable, and her visitors smarted under a sense of patronage.

The language of Buckland Street, coloured with oaths, the crude fashions of the slop-shop, and the drunken brawls, jarred on her nerves like the sharpening of a saw.