Harley Greenoak's Charge Part 6

"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 d.i.c.k, 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 d.i.c.k Selmes and her unattractive retainer.

"You have been here before, I suppose, Miss Hesketh?" began d.i.c.k.

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," a.s.sented 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 d.i.c.k stare. Did they grow many like her in this strange, fascinating country, he wondered? As he told her his ident.i.ty a new interest came into her eyes, but wholly unsuspected by himself.

"Ay, and is yon d.i.c.k 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.

d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k 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, naively 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 d.i.c.k 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. d.i.c.k Selmes, the only one given to expressing that emotion outwardly, was metaphorically rubbing his eyes. Where, for instance, was the soiled, coa.r.s.e-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-gla.s.s 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 gra.s.s 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 d.i.c.k Selmes with enthusiasm. Then, becoming guiltily aware that he might be seeming to disparage his host's normal arrangements, he added lamely, "Er--of course, we do get--er--as you say, Miss Brandon, with n.o.body to take care of us. And--you've done it, and no mistake."

Then old Hesketh put a few of his terse, laconic questions as to the welfare of those she had left at home, and characteristically dismissed the subject from his mind. Harley Greenoak, normally taciturn, said little; but d.i.c.k Selmes was a host in himself, and soon the conversation became a dialogue between these two young people. They were chattering away as if they had known each other all their lives.

Soon after breakfast the Cape cart was inspanned.

"I'm hopin', sir," said Elsie McGunn, just before she climbed to her seat, "that ye'll nae be takkin' it ill onything A may have said."

"Not a bit of it, Elsie," cried d.i.c.k, shaking her heartily by the hand.

"Not a bit of it. Why, you've given us a thundering big laugh or two.

What better could one say? Good-bye."

"Ay, but yander's a braw laddie," whispered the Scotswoman to her charge, as they bade each other good-bye. "A braw laddie, and a guid one. Mind your hairt, la.s.sie; mind your hairt." And flicking her whip, she sent the cart jolting off down the winding stony road.

CHAPTER SIX.

HARLEY GREENOAK HAS MISGIVINGS.

The coming of Hazel Brandon effected something like a revolution at Haakdoornfontein, for she was as good as her word, and at once set to work to reform the interior of that easy-going, happy-go-lucky establishment out of all recognition. The table department she kept going on the same lines as the initiation we saw her make, and the same extended to the rooms. No more dust, no more makeshifts. From all sorts of unsuspected places she fished out hidden things. d.i.c.k Selmes, for instance, coming in after a long day's hunt, stared to find what magic had been wrought in his room. Snowy sheets and pillow-cases on the bed, things his host despised as feminine superfluities, equally snowy towels instead of the one cloudy one he had been forced to make shift with; the rickety three-legged washstand with its rusty tin basin had given way to a neat chintz-covered packing-case and patterned crockery--and the empty-bottle candlestick had been disestablished in favour of a bra.s.s one. On the same lines had the quarters of the other two been reorganised, except that old Hesketh drew the line at sheets.

Blankets were good enough for any man, he declared, and flatly refused to court rheumatism at his time of life by sleeping between cold, glazy stuff like that.

Our friend d.i.c.k now began to overhaul his kit, and was conscious of searchings of heart as he realised that it was so limited. He had brought little more than absolute necessaries in the way of clothing.

Greenoak had warned him that he would have to do without luxuries at Haakdoornfontein, and, by Jingo, Greenoak had been right up till now; but Greenoak, of course, had not been able to foretell the sudden irruption of a bright, refined, and exceedingly pretty girl upon their rough and ready mode of living.