Poppy Part 15

"Oh, she may be," Sophie's air was unbelieving; "but I don't see where it comes in."

She took her tea sulkily from Poppy's hand. Bramham looked bored. The little western wind blew again in his ear.

"Perhaps her charm is not to be seen. Perhaps it is an essence--a fragrance----"

Sophie scoffed at what she did not understand.

"Oh, you and your old poetry----"

"That's just what it is," said Bramham. "There's an odour of happiness about her that infects everyone who comes near her--no one cares a hang about what she wears or anything like that."

"Well, I don't like her, anyway," said Sophie, now thoroughly ill-tempered, "and I don't see why you do. She's covered with freckles."

That should have ended the matter, but Poppy's taste for torment was whetted.

"Perhaps Mr. Bramham doesn't know her as well as you do, Sophie," she said softly.

Sophie glared. Mr. Bramham looked amused. They all knew that Mrs. Portal could never be anything but a name to Sophie--that it was really an impertinence on her part to be discussing Mrs. Portal at all.

"Do _you_ know her?" she retorted rudely.

"Of course not!" answered Poppy. "I know no one in Durban except you, Sophie--and now Mr. Bramham," she smiled, a sudden smile of great sweetness at Bramham, and at that he gave her his whole attention.

"That's dull for you, surely!"

"Oh, no! I have plenty to do; and books to read; and how can one be dull in such a lovely place as Natal?"

The sun came out in Bramham. He was a Natalian and proud of it.

"I believe she gets up in the morning and goes out to see if the sun rises!" said Sophie, as if denouncing the conclusive symptom of idiotcy.

The cold look with which Bramham had at first surveyed Poppy had now quite disappeared, and his grey-eyed smile was all for her. He also was a sun-rise man.

"Do you like books?" he asked. "I can lend you any amount. We get all the new ones, and as soon as they're read the Lord knows where they go!

I'll send you some up, if I may."

"Thank you, that _will_ be good of you," said Poppy with enthusiasm.

"Send her up all the old poetry books you can find," jeered Sophie.

"Personally, _I_ like a jolly good yellow-back."

Mr. Bramham looked extremely bored by this priceless piece of information, and more so still when she returned immediately to the subject of the men she was anxious to meet. Poppy got up and, opening the piano, began to play a little gay air to which she whistled softly; she never sang.

"I'm just _dying_ to know him," said Sophie ardently. "He looks as though he has committed every sin you ever heard of. And how _did_ he get that fearful scar right across his face? Vitriol?"

The little air at the piano stopped suddenly.

"I really couldn't tell you. He is not communicative on the subject,"

said Bramham drily. "But perhaps he will unfold to you--do go on playing, Miss Chard!"

He adored music, and had an excellent view of an extraordinarily pretty pair of ankles under the music-stool.

Poppy complied, but she changed the air to something savage that made Bramham think of a Zulu war-chant.

"Well, I shall certainly ask him when I meet him. I wonder you haven't been able to find out! He lives with you, doesn't he?"

"He is staying with me, at present, yes." Bramham's tone was full of weariness.

"And that dark, strange Irishman everyone is talking about--Carson--he is staying with you, too, isn't he?"

"Yes."

"Are they great friends?"

"We all know each other very well."

Miss Cornell laughed genially.

"I should say you do--isn't it true that you are called the three bad men all over Africa--come now?"

"I'm afraid someone has been filling your head with nonsense. Who spreads these stories, I wonder?"

"Ah, yes, that's all very well, but you know it's true, all the same.

You are three dangerous, fascinating men, everyone says so, and the Kaffirs have names for you all. What is yours, Mr. Bramham?"

"Kaffirs have names for everybody if one had time to find out what they were."

"Oh, I know--_Umkoomata_--that's what they call you. Now, what wickedness can that mean?"

"Who tells you these wonderful things, my dear young lady? You really have a lot of inside information about everything. You should start a newspaper." Bramham was slightly exasperated.

"Oh, I know a lot more besides that," said Miss Cornell, shaking her finger at him archly. "About you, and Mr. Carson, too. He is going up on a secret expedition into Borapota for the English Government, isn't he?"

"_Very_ secret, apparently," thought Bramham. "How the devil do these things leak out?"

"Something or other, yes," he said aloud.

"They say the English Government thinks an _awful_ lot of him."

"Yes, he's a clever fellow," said Bramham, casually. No one would have supposed him to be speaking of a man dearer to him than a brother.

Bramham did not wear his heart where it could be pecked at by the Sophie Cornells of the world.

Poppy got up from the piano, and Bramham got up, too, and looked at his watch.

"I must be off," said he, with a great air of business-hurry, which left him as soon as he got out of the gate.

"Now, don't forget to bring Mr. Abinger next time," Sophie called after him from the verandah; "and that Mr. Carson, too," she added, as an afterthought.