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been training her in Suitable Topics for a Lady’s Dinner Table, which did not include Rat Dissection for Beginners or Beastly Customs of the Heathen, which was a pity because Jane knew a lot about both of these.
    ‘I noticed a cinema down in the town,’ she observed. ‘We haven’t been to the pictures for a month.’
    ‘Oh, yes, we have quite a good selection of films,’ Mrs Mason replied, a little blurrily. ‘Only two days later than the Melbourne releases. Improving cinema, of course. The Pio- neers. For the Term of his Natural Life. The Birth of White Australia . They’re shown at the town hall. I always send the boys to see the Australian pictures, so good for them.’
    ‘None of the Hollywood films, then?’ asked Ruth, who had a passion for Ronald Coleman shared by Dot, who doted on that thin moustache he wore.
    ‘Well, yes, the Vue Grand cinema further down the hill shows them. Some of them are quite unsuitable for the young,’ said Mrs Mason.
    ‘I never censor, of course,’ said Phryne, in such a bright tone that Mrs Mason found herself nodding in agreement. ‘Young people must form their own tastes. Here come the boys, I believe,’ she added, as a thunder of footsteps came to her ear. It was either them or distant cattle stampeding.
    ‘Madam, dinner is served,’ announced the acidulated butler.
    Dinner was, Phryne considered, sticky. The food was excellent of its kind. Conventional vegetable soup. A perfectly acceptable dish of fried fish with its accompaniment of chips. A slice or two of pleasantly cooked roast beef in its own gravy and the proper vegetables. A rice pudding. Anchovy toast.
    The feast of reason and the flow of soul, however, lagged. Dot plugged along gamely on pictures she had seen, assisted by Ruth. Jane contemplated the boys with a cool, scientific eye. Mrs Mason ate heavily, as did Phryne. It had been a long day. The boys ate like wharfies who had been unloading coal all night. Conversation languished again. Jolyon yelped as someone—could it have been his mother?—kicked him in the shin.
    ‘You want to watch out for your hair,’ he told Ruth.
    ‘Oh? Why?’ she asked. It was an unusual conversational opening.
    ‘The phantom snipper,’ replied the boy in a deep radio-play tone.
    ‘Who’s he?’ asked Ruth, as she was required to ask.
    ‘You’re just walking along,’ elaborated Jolyon, ‘hatless and taking the air, when you feel a sudden pull from behind, and—snip! You turn around and there’s no one there. And when you feel around behind your neck,’ he said, groping at his nape in demonstration, ‘your plait’s gone or hanging by a thread! No one’s seen him, no one knows who he is . . . the phantom snipper!’
    ‘Jolyon, what nonsense,’ reproved Mrs Mason.
    ‘So there is no phantom snipper?’ asked Ruth, relieved. She greatly valued her long, thick chestnut hair.
    ‘Oh, there have been a couple of pranks, childish nonsense. Take no notice of it,’ ordered Mrs Mason. Ruth did not feel comforted.
    Kiwi decided that it was his turn to carry the conversational burden.
    ‘Are you at school?’ he asked Jane, who was sitting nearest him.
    ‘Why, yes,’ she answered. ‘Are you?’
    ‘’Course,’ he said. And that appeared to exhaust his ability to chat.
    ‘I am going to be a doctor,’ Jane informed him.
    ‘Me too,’ said Kiwi, ‘but I’m a bit of a duffer at maths.’
    ‘I find chemistry difficult,’ confessed Jane. ‘The school doesn’t treat it seriously.’
    ‘I know.’ Kiwi was interested—in a girl! He never thought such a thing would happen. A little girl, too, not a glamorous creature. She still had plaits, until the phantom snipper caught her. But, however, she was right. ‘Stinks, they call it,’ he said bitterly.
    ‘And just as you get your solution hydrated someone comes in and makes you go and play hockey,’ Jane rejoined.
    ‘Too true! Or football,’ sighed Kiwi.
    ‘All right for you brainy chaps, I like football,’