d the Blue Class 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-class 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 Tarsesias 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 'damn' 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 class-room, looked up from her work
of tooling leather, the delicate steel instrument in her hand, a little
gildi