"Never been to Johannesburg?" Sophie's tone expressed the utmost pity and contempt. "Well, but you're an English girl, I can see. Not been long out here, have you?"
"Only a week or so."
"Great Scott! you've got a lot to learn!"
Miss Cornell took a packet of cigarettes from her pocket and lit one. She then offered the packet to Miss Chard, who did not, however, take one.
"Don't smoke either? Och, what! You're not half a good fellow! Well, take off your hat, then. Do be sociable."
Miss Chard unpinned her floppy white hat and wore it on her knee for the rest of the interview. Sophie noticed the piled-up crown of black, black hair; also, the peculiar branching way in which it grew above the girl's brows. ("I wonder if she uses bay-rum to make it all dry and electriccy like that?" was her inward comment. "And I'll bet she wears a switch.")
"Well, to continue my tale—I had a lovely time in darling old Kimberley: dances, theatres, suppers, everything you can think of; then my sister's husband must needs go off and buy a rotten old farm at the back of nowhere—Barkly East, if you love me! They wanted me to come, too, but I said, Dead off! No, thanks! I want something more out of life than mountain scenery."
Rosalind Chard looked at her and could well believe it. At the moment Sophie reminded her of nothing so much as a full-blown cabbage-rose, dying to be plucked.
"And so you came here instead?"
"Well, no; first I went to Jo-burg, and I must say I had a heavenly time there; but—well—it didn't suit my health, so I became sekertary to an old snook called Johnson. He had been in Rhodesia, poking about in some ancient ruins there, and—oh, my garden flower!—the stuff he used to give me to write and type! And the way he used to bully me when I didn't get through it! And then complained of my spelling, if you please. I didn't stay with him any longer than I could help, you bet, though the screw was good. But I must tell you, such fun—just as I was going to leave him I discovered from his correspondence that he was going up to Zanzibar to make some researches for some rotten old society or other, so I stuck to him for another month. I thought I might as well get a passage to Durban for nix. So I started with him from the Cape, but when the boat touched here, I said, Good-bye, Johnnie! Oh crumbs! The row he made when he found me trekking!"