"Now you've got it! How did you like that, hey? Lekker, hey?"
Some time after midnight Poppy would weep herself to sleep.
Once Poppy used to go to St. Gabriel's Infant School, where she had learned to read and write; but when the twins arrived in the world, Aunt Lena could no longer spare her from home, and her education languished for three years. But at last there came a letter from her god-mother in Port Elizabeth saying that she had sent five pounds to St. Michael's Home, asking the Sisters to give Poppy as much education as possible for that sum.
Poppy was wild with delight. It had been beyond her wildest dreams to go to St. Michael's and learn all sorts of wonderful things with all the grand children of Bloemfontein. She could not believe that such joy was to be hers. Mrs. Kennedy made great objections to the scheme, and seemed likely to get her way until her husband took the trouble to insist. So Poppy went off one morning full of hope and high ambition, in a clean, very stiffly starched overall of faded galatea, her old straw hat freshly decorated with a yellow pugaree that hung in long tails down her back.
But school was only the beginning of a fresh era of misery. The girls stared at her old boots and sneered at her pugaree, and no one would be friends with her because she wore white cotton stockings, which were only sixpence a pair, and sold to Kaffir girls to wear on Sundays.
Poppy gave back sneer for sneer and taunt for taunt with great versatility; but her heart was sometimes near bursting under the galatea overall. It seemed to her that even the teachers despised her because of her shabbiness and ugliness, and that when she worked hard at her lessons she got less praise than the pretty girls. "Yes! it's because I'm ugly, and everything I wear is ugly," she whispered to herself as she walked home alone every day, hurrying because she knew the children would be dressed and ready, waiting to be taken to the Kopje as soon as she had bolted her cold dinner. Clara's and Emily's dinner was always kept hot. They went to the Dames' Institute, another school of some importance where all the nice high Dutch Boers sent their children: and they got home at two o'clock. Mrs. Kennedy said she would keep no dinner hot later than that hour, so that Poppy, arriving at three, found her stewed mutton cold in a dish of fatty gravy, and sometimes a bit of cold suet pudding. She would always have "filled up" contentedly enough with bread, but Mrs. Kennedy grumbled when too much bread was eaten, as she only baked once a week.
Sometimes, when Poppy had been very unhappy at school, she used to stop at the Kopje instead of hurrying home, so that she could cry without being spied on by Ina or the twins. She would lie down among the rocks and the kind green leaves, and moan and cry out against God and everybody in the world. Her little songs and stories seemed to have died in her heart and been buried. She would call out to God that He might have let her have something—a kind mother, or golden hair, or brains, or a white skin, or a happy home, or something; it wouldn't have hurt Him, and it would have made all the difference to her. Later she passed from argument to anger and from anger to frenzy; shouting at the sky because she was ugly and poor and horrible within as well as without, so that no one loved her and she hated everyone.
At last, tired out, hopeless, sick with bitter crying, she would lay her head against an old mimosa tree that had a curve in its trunk like the curve of a mother's arm, and the soft odour of the fluffy round yellow blossoms would steal over her. Later, a land of peace and strength seemed to come out of the tree to her, and she would have courage to get up and go on her way.
One of the teachers, Miss Briggs, was always scolding her about her hands. She would draw the attention of the whole class to them, covering Poppy with shame. They were not big hands like Clara's and Emily's but they were rough and coarse with housework and through being continually in the water washing stockings and handkerchiefs and plates; and in the winter they got horribly chapped, with blood marks all over them, so that the teachers couldn't bear to see them and the girls used to say "Sis!" when she reached for anything. Her nails, too, were often untidy, and her hair. She never had time in the mornings to give it more than just one brush and tie it back in her neck, and she used to have to clean her nails with a pin or a mimosa thorn while she was hurrying to school, learning her lessons on the way. It was the only time she had to learn them, except in the afternoons when she took the children out. If they were good and would stay happy, she could get out her books from under the pram seat and learn; but almost immediately Ina would want to be played with, or Georgie would fall down and hurt himself and whimper in her arms for half an hour. The fact was that the children had been brought up to believe that Poppy was in the world entirely for their comfort and convenience, and they could not bear to see her doing anything that was not for them.