“Wet season coming on. Transport drivers take ten times longer than in dry season. Get stuck in mud-holes. Sit for weeks on river banks waiting for floods to go down. Roads sometimes so bad they abandon their loads. Leave them piled up by the roadside for next waggons to bring. Next waggons usually open them and help themselves to what they like best. Kaffirs also come and help themselves. Once when I was travelling with my husband amongst the kaffir kraals in Bechuanaland I came across a native girl wearing a pink satin ball-gown that I had last seen at my dressmaker’s in Kimberley and which had been dispatched by waggon with a lot of other things.”
I could not help wondering who would have looked funnier in the pink satin ball-gown—Mrs Brand or the black girl.
“Yes, and then there is the sad tale of Mrs Marriott,” chimed in Mrs Skeffington-Smythe, gazing at me with her striped eyes. “She came up here to be married, bringing her wedding-gown and a few things with her in the coach, while her trousseau and the other things for the house were sent by waggon in three enormous cases. Well, the coach had an accident crossing a river, and she lost everything she had with her, and arrived here in a grey skirt and a pink print shirt which she was married in. That was six months ago—but if you get up early-enough in the morning you will meet Mrs Marriott doing her shopping before any one is about, still wearing her grey skirt and pink print blouse.”
“Impossible!” I cried, petrified. “Well, there you are! Her three packing cases never arrived, that’s all.”
“But how frightful! Surely she could have been helped out with some kind of wardrobe. Surely you—” I looked from one to another of them.
“Oh, she’s not one of us,” said Judy carelessly. “She’s a Port George woman. We couldn’t very well offer to do anything. Besides, they say she is quite unapproachable. I believe the women here were ready to be friendly, but she rebuffed all advances.”
“She has other troubles, besides lack of a wardrobe,” said Miss Cleeve dryly.
“No one has ever been inside her house even,” said Mrs Skeffington-Smythe. “Very silly of her, I think. In my opinion it always does one good to tell one’s troubles to some one else.”
At this Mrs Valetta gave a dry laugh that drew my attention to her, but she still had her eyes closed.
“Ah, Porkie,” said Miss Cleeve, “we haven’t all your simple, confiding nature.” Porkie, otherwise Mrs Skeffington-Smythe, threw her a glance that was neither simple nor confiding.