Page:Coo-ee - tales of Australian life by Australian ladies.djvu/143

Rh to bring those girls into my room at that time of night.

'Mrs. Vallings,' said Nancy at last, in her soft banana-fed voice, with the soupçon of twang, 'what do you think of Miss Ariell?'

'Yes, that's just what we want to know!' put in Mab, sitting up among her cushions, and twirling the golden tip of a great length of hair.

'I think she's a very charming person, and one I never dreamed of meeting in this part of the world.'

'I wish she had kept out of it—at least out of our corner of it,' said Nancy.

'So do I,' echoed the other.

I took a rapid glance at them.

'Why?'

'Why?—why?—I don't know exactly. Because she's not like other girls, that's why, partly. It isn't that she's more original,' said Nancy, in a quick way. 'She's not; but she's different.'

I looked at the girls. Nancy was sitting bent forward, watching the flames. Mab had straightened herself, and her sunny head, turned to red--gold in the fire-shine, was thrown back, and on both their faces there was a look of haughty, hurt maidenhood.

'It's the stories,' they both broke out together,—'they somehow make us feel uncomfortable.'

I am not in the very least a mawkish woman, but I went over then and there and kissed those girls, one after the other, on their white, pure foreheads.

'The wretch!' I said, in a voice of smothered rage.