but you bet
she does!" said Beryl, whose language always contained a somewhat
sporting flavour. "You bet she takes an interest in clothes and men
and everything that's going! Nothing much gets past those weary eyes.
And she is as _chic_ as the deuce. Never have we seen such clothes up
here. She smells so delicious, too--not scented, you know, but just
little faint puffs of fragrance. I wish I knew how to do it. But I
don't think you _can_ do it without sachets in your corsets and a maid
to sew them into all your clothes, and salts and perfumes for your
bath, and plenty of tin to keep it all going! Blow! How can
poverty-stricken wretches like us contend with that kind of thing, I'd
like to know?"

"We don't have to contend with it," said Gay indifferently.

The two girls were sitting in Berlie's mother's private sitting-room
upstairs. Gay was in riding-kit and had come to beguile Berlie to go
for a canter.

"Oh, don't we?" said the latter emphatically. "You should just see the
pile of men that came in to lunch here today--just to have a look at
her. The story of her glory has gone forth. She came over to our
table and asked if we minded if she sat with us, and then she wound her
lovely manners all around mother so that mum thinks she's a dream and
an angel. But _I_ don't cotton to her much, Gay--and I can feel she
doesn't like me, either, though she was as sweet as honey. My dear,
she will nobble all our men--I feel it in my bones."

"Let her," said Gay listlessly.

"She even has old Lundi Druro crumpled up--what do you think of
_that_?" Gay's charming face turned to a mask. "That gives you an
idea of her power," continued Beryl dolorously, "if she can keep Lundi
Druro amused. She is sitting in the lounge with him now. They've been
there ever since lunch, and he was to have gone out to his mine early
this morning."

Gay jumped up from her chair.

"Are you coming for that ride or not, Berlie? I'm sick of scorching
indoors." There were, indeed, two spots of flame in her cheeks.

"Oh, Gay, I can't; I am too G. I. for anything." "G. I." is Rhodesian
for "gone in," a common condition for both men and women and things in
that sprightly land of nicknames and nick-phrases.

"I'm off, then," said Gay hurriedly.

"Wait a minute--I'll come down with you!" said Beryl, and, rushing to
the mirror over the mantel, began to pat her pretty _cendre_ hair flat
to her head, in unconscious imitation of Mrs.