"Pas! pas! Pas petite méchante! Pas!"
Clem observed the photograph in Poppy's lap.
"She has been showing you her hero—the hero of us all. Everyone in this house genuflects before Eve Carson."
And so at last Poppy knew the name of the idol before which she, too, worshipped!
"By the way, did Cinthie mention that his face is bigger than anyone's? That is the final point of beauty with Cinthie—to have a big face. Well, Evelyn Carson's face is not so big, but his ways are, and his ideas, and those things make for bigness of soul——"
Poppy said nothing: only she prayed with all her soul that Clem would continue to talk upon this subject; and Clem, looking dreamily at the girl, but obviously not thinking of her, responded to the prayer.
"He is a wonderful person, and we all adore him, even though our judgment sometimes asks us why, and our ears sometimes hear the untoward things that are not compatible with reverence," she was smiling. "I daresay you have heard of him."
"Yes," said Poppy, in an even voice.
"Most people have, by now—he's been one of the foremost figures in South African life for years, one of the many Irishmen who have left their native land, burning with the sense of England's tyranny, only to go and strive for England's fame and glory in some other part of the world. We met him first on the Rand, where all the interesting blackguards forgather at some time or another; but he was always in trouble there, for, you know, Oom Paul doesn't approve of Imperialistic Irishmen, and invariably contrives to make anyone of the kind exceedingly uncomfortable. Karri Carson has been a marked man, watched by the Secret Service, and his every action and every word reported, with the result, of course, that he has said and done many daringly foolish things, and nearly been deported over the border once or twice. Fortunately, there are more interesting places than the Rand, and there is always a rumpus going on in some quarter of Africa, and he has been in all the rumpuses of the last fifteen years—Uganda—Matabelel and—anywhere where there was anything in the wind and where real men were wanted. He's earned the V.C. a dozen times, though he's only got the D.S.O. But it is not love of honours that is his moving spirit—just an Irishman's lust for being in the "redmost hell of the fight." Between intervals of active service he has gone off into the wild deeps of Africa, where no one has ever been before—discovered a new quadruped and a new tribe of natives. The Royal Institute is dying to trim him up with blue ribbons and exhibit him in London, but Africa has kissed him on the mouth, and he will not leave her." Clem drew a long breath. "I can't think what we shall all do now that he is gone," she finished sadly.
"Gone!" Poppy wondered what kept her voice so calm while her soul cried out within her.