daft,” she answered with decision. “Mon – but A have nae ony uncle.”
Dick stared, and was destined to stare more in about a second. A faint rustle behind him, combined with what sounded suspiciously like a suppressed gurgle, caused him to wheel sharply round.
Framed in the doorway stood a girl – an exceedingly pretty girl. She had a sweet oval face, dark hair, and well-marked brows, and lustrous eyes to match. These now seemed sparkling and dancing with merriment.
“I am Mr Hesketh’s niece,” began this wholly unexpected vision of beauty. “I suppose we are here earlier than we were expected,” and there was a suspicious unsteadiness in the tones, as if the speaker were gulping down an irresistible peal of laughter.
“Eh, but A do believe he’s been takkin’ me for yeerself, Miss Hazel,” spoke the red-haired woman; and poor Dick, now dead certain that the new-comer had overheard the foregoing dialogue, looked and felt about as big an ass as he had ever looked and felt in his life.
“It’s my old nurse, Elsie McGunn,” explained the girl. “We’ve been travelling ever so many hours, and now she’ll be taking the cart home again after breakfast, and even then can’t sit still and rest.”
“Indeed, I was just admiring such a display of energy,” said Dick, pleasantly.
“Deed, laddie, and ye were just admiring nothing at a’ aboot me,” retorted the plain-spoken Scotswoman, but quite good-naturedly.
The answer made opportunity for the girl to express her stifled feelings, and under cover of it she went off into the hearty merry peal of laughter whose main cause was the dialogue she had overheard between Dick Selmes and her unattractive retainer.
“You have been here before, I suppose, Miss Hesketh?” began Dick.
The other stared.
“Oh, I see,” she said. “But my name isn’t Hesketh – it’s Brandon. Mr Hesketh is my uncle on my mother’s side.”
“Of course. But, as you most likely know, your uncle is a man of few words, and, beyond mentioning the fact that you were coming, gave us no further information. He didn’t even tell us your name. Naturally I didn’t like to appear inquisitive.”
“Naturally,” assented the other; and again the laugh struggled in her eyes, evoked by the recollection of the comical situation for which that lack of inquisitiveness was responsible. “But now – as you have the advantage of me – I have told you who I am, suppose you tell me who you are.”
There was a sweet, sunny frankness about this girl, an utter absence of self-consciousness that made Dick stare. Did they grow many like her in this strange, fascinating country, he wondered? As he told her his identity a new interest came into her eyes, but wholly unsuspected by himself.
“Ay, and is yon Dick Selmes?”
The interruption proceeded from the wielder of the duster, in the further corner of the room.
“Elsie!” cried the girl, half horrified, half mirthful. “You are forgetting yourself. You needn’t be quite so familiar, at any rate.”
“Eh! An’ would we be makkin’ a stranger of the laddie?” tranquilly replied the irrepressible Scotswoman.
Dick burst into a hearty roar.
“Quite right, Elsie,” he cried. “I believe we’re going to be jolly good friends, you and I.”
This was a character, he decided – a howling joke. He was almost sorry she was going back again directly, whereas when he had first heard the announcement he had been anything but sorry. Then the sound of voices outside told that the master of the place and the other guest had returned.
Old Hesketh greeted his niece affectionately, but undemonstratively, as was his way.
“This is Harley Greenoak,” he said. “You may have heard of him.”
The girl’s face lit up with interest.
“I should think so,” she said, as she put forth her hand. “Who hasn’t?”
“Oh, about nine hundred million people, I suppose,” tranquilly answered the subject of this implied exordium. “I don’t expect that leaves many more in the world.”
“Well, there’s no one in South Africa who hasn’t, at any rate,” rejoined the girl. And Dick Selmes, confound it, was half ashamed of a sneaking satisfaction that Harley Greenoak’s beard was rapidly turning grey.
“That you, Elsie?” said old Hesketh, shaking hands with the privileged retainer. “Well, and you haven’t managed to pick up a husband yet? Ho, ho!”
“Yan’s the wurrd, Mr Hesketh. They’re to be had for the pickin’ up. But it’ll end in ma havin’ to come and tak’ care o’ yeerself, A’m thinkin’. Yan dust,” designating her recent work, “must have been lyin’ aroound for a yeer at least.”
This retort, naïvely ambiguous, given with perfect equability, raised a laugh among its hearers, who chose to read but one of its two potential meanings.
“Now, Uncle Eph,” said the girl, decisively. “We are going to get the breakfast ready, and it’s nearly ready now – and we’ve got a little surprise for you. I should prefer you all to go outside and amuse yourselves for the next quarter of an hour; in fact, till I call you in.”
This was a command there was no gainsaying. Old Ephraim gave a dry chuckle, reached for his pipe, and obeyed without a word. Harley Greenoak likewise. But Dick Selmes said —
“Do let me stay and help you, Miss Brandon. Why, it’ll be like a jolly picnic.”
She hesitated a moment.
“No,” she said. “We don’t want any men.” Then he followed the others.
When they returned they found she had been as good as her word. This was a surprise indeed. Dick Selmes, the only one given to expressing that emotion outwardly, was metaphorically rubbing his eyes. Where, for instance, was the soiled, coarse-textured old cloth, covering one end of the bare table – where the camp-kettle, handed from one to the other from its usual resting-place on the floor, as more coffee was needed? Where the weather-beaten enamel ware, the tin pannikins holding the milk and sugar, the cloudy spoons? Where, too, the dark-brown bread, and the mess badly and indifferently cooked in a frying-pan? Gone – wholly gone. Instead, a snowy cloth, bright, hissing urn, patterned china, roester-koekjes steaming white within. Chops, too, hot from the gridiron, juicy and crisp, and a great honeycomb reposing in a sparkling cut-glass dish. The metamorphosis was complete indeed.
“We’ll come to believe in fairy tales again soon,” said old Hesketh as he gazed upon this. “You haven’t let the grass grow under your feet – eh, Hazel?”
“No, Uncle Eph. I’m going to civilise you a bit, now that I’m here. You men get into shockingly careless ways. What’s the good of having all these nice tablecloths and tea sets if you don’t use them? So the first thing we did was to dig them out of the boxes where they were stowed away. Then we disestablished the old Hottentot cook – ‘cook’ indeed! – and behold the result!”
“It’s great – great!” cried Dick Selmes with enthusiasm. Then, becoming guiltily aware that he might be seeming to disparage
