Verbeena felt a sudden, mad boyish temptation to shoot her cigarette stump into the eye of a native sleeping at the foot of the verandah. But, very unusual with her in such cases, she refrained. It might start some trouble and she didn’t want that to happen now.
Nothing must prevent her journey upon the desert!
From her window she looked out toward it, so wonderful, so superb, so exquisite, weird and beautiful. Exactly, she told herself, like a big, black smudge.
But she cuddled in bed with one knee up to her neck in cute boyish fashion, laughing softly at the remembrance of another time when she had popped a cigarette stump into the eye of a London bobby from the top of a ’bus.
And such a merry fight as she had put up when he had yanked her down!
She was wearing her usual boy’s clothes and when she had given her real name at the station, the policeman wouldn’t believe it of her and the matron had resigned rather than carry the investigation further.
Verbeena gave her boyish head a twist or two on the pillow and then she slept. Two weird sounds were in her ears as she dropped off. One was a queer, wild, melancholy song. The other was the snores of Lord Tawdry, equally weird, equally melancholy, equally wild.
Yet she slept.
But an hour later awoke.
Verbeena untied her long, knotted eyelashes and peered about.