When she glanced again they were watching the Australian with their four strange eyes and laughing German phrases at her, “Go on, Gertrude!” “Are you sure, Gertrude?” “How do you know, Gertrude!”
Miriam had not yet dared to glance in the direction of the Australian. Her eyes at dinner-time had cut like sharp steel. Turning, however, towards the danger zone, without risking the coming of its presiding genius within the focus of her glasses she caught a glimpse of “Jimmie” sitting back in her chair tall and plump and neat, and shaking with wide-mouthed giggles. Miriam wondered at the high neat peak of hair on the top of her head and stared at her pearly little teeth. There was something funny about her mouth. Even when she strained it wide it was narrow and tiny—rabbity. She raised a short arm and began patting her peak of hair with a tiny hand which showed a small onyx seal ring on the little finger. “Ask Judy!” she giggled, in a fruity squeak.
“Ask Judy!” they all chorused, laughing.
Judy cast an appealing flash of her eyes sideways at nothing, flushed furiously and mumbled, “Ik weiss nik—I don’t know.”
In the outcries and laughter which followed, Miriam noticed only the hoarse hacking laugh of the Australian. Her eyes flew up the table and fixed her as she sat laughing, her chair drawn back, her knees crossed—tea was drawing to an end. The detail of her terrifyingly stylish ruddy-brown frieze dress with its Norfolk jacket bodice and its shiny black leather belt was hardly distinguishable from the dark background made by the folding doors. But the dreadful outline of her shoulders was visible, the squarish oval of her face shone out—the wide forehead from which the wiry black hair was combed to a high puff, the red eyes, black now, the long straight nose, the wide laughing mouth with the enormous teeth.
Her voice conquered easily.
“Nein,” she tromboned, through the din.
Mademoiselle’s little finger stuck up sharply like a steeple, her mouth said, “Oh—Oh——”
Fräulein’s smile was at its widest, waiting the issue.
“Nein,” triumphed the Australian, causing a lull.