Page:Coo-ee - tales of Australian life by Australian ladies.djvu/146

142 traces and landing you in a hole,' she concluded, with conviction.

'No, we don't like blasphemy,' chimed in Nancy. 'It's bad form in a man, and—well—its downright disgusting in a woman.'

'I don't think,' I said, after a pause, 'that Miss Ariell will tell you any more of these stories, or again blaspheme in your presence. I'll go and have a talk with her'—I spoke cheerily and lightly; feeling the evil would slip off from these clean souls, and leave no trace, it seemed better to make no comment.

Both the girls suddenly blushed from their chins to where the soft gold line touched the white of their brows.

'We thought that too,—we tried to stop her,—but she is so persistent. We talk slang, you know—frightfully,' stammered Nancy, 'and—and we do queer things at times, and—and she said she was certain we weren't half as simple as we posed for, and that we knew—oh, lots of things.'

'Yes, that's what she said,' murmured Mab.

A sudden conviction came to me. 'I believe she thought it too, the fool!' I muttered half-aloud. It is possible to misinterpret some Australian girls—it has been done by wiser than Miss Ariell, and will be again, till the land and the people in it mellow; but these girls—a heart must be very foul or very false before it would do them this wrong.