“I can’t stand that woman!” said Halton, fretted by a comparison. “She leaves a taste in my mouth like a cigarette that has gone out.”
“It’s your liver. Who hasn’t a liver in this heat? My ideal, these days, is a clean tongue and a desire for breakfast.”
“Mrs. Churton is forty,” pursued Halton spitefully. “And she aims at three-and-thirty. A woman of forty is only tolerable as a background for her daughters!”
The Administrator looked across the space of white cloth and guavas—there were no granadillas!—with a grim line about the corners of his hidden lips.
“I hope you enjoyed your ride!” he said politely, with a suggestion of unappreciated humour.
CHAPTER IV
“A man’s best fortune, or his worst, is a wife.”—English Proverb.
The telephone bell rang at eight in the morning, and if Ally were so disagreeable as to grunt and turn over on the other side, Chum used to get up and go to it herself. She was usually aggravated by the man at Maitso Exchange demanding of her if she were there, and then no further communication. He was the Hub of the Port Victorian Universe, and had become autocratic through bitterness of spirit; therefore he thought it just retribution to make sure beforehand that all the usual communication points were in working order before he actually had to connect them.
All the gossip of Key Island goes through the telephone, which is as inappropriate to Port Victoria as her electric light. It is the alternative for a post too, for the Planters, living some three miles out, have no other means of communication, and it is very much safer to make your own business arrangements with a fellow at Maitso or Mitsinjovy, or to order more soda-water from Van Buren’s Stores, than trust to a letter, even if you are only a mile from the post-office. When the Lewin Bungalow was connected, Chum usually found herself besieged with friendly enquiries as to how she was, and how Ally Sloper was, and a little conversation ensued that was as strictly unofficial as all Key’land characteristics. She only resented it on Sunday, when English habit still clung to her and made her feel injured for lack of an extra half-hour in bed, but as Ally took more rousing than the time spent at the telephone, it generally ended in Mrs. Lewin walking into the dining-room bare-foot, yawning delightfully, and a wasted vision of beauty in déshabille, since the personality at the other end of the communication tube was only a voice.
“Well, who are you?” she said sleepily.