Part 6 (2/2)
”He is by profession a surveyor, not exactly a partner in the firm of Gadd and Saxby, on Market Square, but something very near it.” (Do you who read see W. Keyse carrying the chain and spirit-level, and sweeping out the office when the Kaffir boy forgets?). ”He saw me walking in the Stad with the Centipede,” Greta added.
This was a fanciful name for the whole school of eighty pupils promenading upon its hundred and sixty legs of various nationalities in search of exercise and fresh air.
”Go on!” said the Red Cla.s.s in a breath, as the White Cla.s.s giggled and nudged each other, and the Blue Cla.s.s opened eyes and ears.
”He was knocked dumb-foolish at once, he says, by my eyes and my figure and my hair. He is not long up from Cape Colony: came out from London through chest-trouble, to catch heart-trouble in Gueldersdorp” (do you hear hectic, coughing Billy Keyse cracking his stupid joke?). ”And if I'll only be engaged to him, he promises to get rich, become as big a swell on the Rand as Marks or Du Taine--isn't that funny, his not knowing Du Taine is my father?--and drive me to race-meetings on a first-cla.s.s English drag, with a team of bays in silver-mounted harness, with rosettes the colour of my eyes.”
Greta threw her golden head back and laughed, displaying a double row of enviable pearls.
”But I've got to wait for all these things until Billy Keyse strikes pay-reef. Poor Billy! Hand over those chocolates, you greedy things!”
Somebody wanted to know how the package had been smuggled into the Convent. Those lay-Sisters were so sharp....
”They're perfect needles--Sister Ta.r.s.esias particularly, and Sister Tobias. But there's a new Emigration Jane among the housemaids. You've seen her--the sallow thing with the greasy light-coloured fringe in curlers, who walks flat-footed like a wader on the mud. I keep expecting to hear her quack.... Well, Billy got hold of her. She didn't know my name, being new, but she recognised me by Billy's description, and sympathised with him, having a young man herself, who doesn't speak a word of English, except 'd.a.m.n' and 'Three of Scotch, please.' I've promised to translate her letters; he writes them in the Taal. And Billy gave her two dollars, and I've given her a hat. It's the big red one mother brought back from Paris--she paid a hundred francs for it at the Maison Cluny--and Emigration Jane thinks, though it's a bit too quiet for her taste, it'll do her a fair old treat when she trims it up with a bit more colour and one or two 'imitation ostridge' tips.... I'd give another hundred francs for the Maison Cluny _modiste_ to hear.” Again the birdlike laugh rang out. ”Now you know everything there is in the letter, girls, except the bit of poetry at the end, which only my most intimate friends may be permitted to read. Lynette Mildare!”
Lynette, bending over a separate table-desk in the light of the north window of the long deal match-boarded cla.s.s-room, looked up from her work of tooling leather, the delicate steel instrument in her hand, a little gilding-brush between her white teeth, a little fold of concentrated attention between her slender brown eyebrows.
”Yes. Did you want anything?”
Greta jumped up, leaving the rest of the box of chocolates to dissolve among the White Cla.s.s, and came over, threading her way between the long rows of desk-stalls.
”Of course I want something.”
”What is it?” asked Lynette, laying down the little tool.
”What everyone has a right to expect from the person who is her dearest friend--sympathy,” said Greta, jumping up and sitting on the corner of the desk, and biting the thick end of her long flaxen pigtail.
”You have it--when there is anything to sympathise about.”
Greta tapped the letter, trying to frown.
”Do you call this nothing?”
”You have saved me from doing so.”
”Lynette Mildare, have you a heart inside you?”
”Certainly; I can feel it beating, and it does its work very well.”
”Am I, then, nothing to you?”
Lynette smiled, looking up at the piquant, charming face.
”You are a great deal to me.”
”And I regard you as a bosom-friend. And the duty of a bosom-friend, besides rus.h.i.+ng off at once to tell you if she hears anybody say anything nasty of you behind your back--a thing which you never do--is to sympathise with you in all your love-affairs--a thing which you do even seldomer.”
Greta stamped with the toe of the dainty little shoe that rested on the beeswaxed boards of the cla.s.s-room, and kicked the leg of the desk with the heel of the other.
<script>