Challis was glad bed-time was still some hours off; she had never yet slept in a room all to herself, but did not like to tell Hermie so.
Roly banged at the door. 'There you go,' he said, 'grabbing everything, Hermie. She wants to come out and finish looking at the tent.'
'Finish looking at your grandmother!' laughed Hermie, then blushed vexedly. That was such a favourite phrase of Bart's she unconsciously fell into it herself; but what would Challis think of such slang, Challis, who was used to the conversation of cultured, travelled people? Challis, who looked such a little lady in her well-cut English-looking clothes, and spoke with the clipped, clear pronunciation her mother had insisted upon all these years?
Challis, of course, would think her a boor, an uneducated, unrefined Australian back-blocks girl. Well, whose fault was it if she was?' She turned to her sister coldly. 'If you have finished we may as well go.'
Challis followed her meekly.
'Flossie,' said the mother, going into a bedroom when it was eight o'clock at night, and the rebel had come in and put herself to bed, 'I've just been unpacking my box and found this for Hermie. Do you think it is pretty?'
She held up the daintiest of hats.
Flossie looked at it, then squeezed her eyes up tight.
'Don't want to see it,' she said.
'We are unpacking the boxes,' the mother said; 'I thought you might like to put your dressing-gown on and come and watch.'