“Oh, bother the Cup! I hear about it till I’m sick. No; Bertha is going to leave here.”
“You don’t say?”
“But she is. I heard the boss say so. This is her last week.”
“Well, I never! Who’d have thought it? What is she up to? Going to marry that old squatter, I’ll bet sixpence. Anyhow, it’s a good riddance.”
“And so say I, the mean thing! We shall be comfortable again when she has gone!”
At this moment if the girls had not been so busy talking they would have noticed the entrance of Bertha, who stood in a little recess before a mirror adjusting her hair. What was wrong with her hair no masculine mind could ever have divined; it looked as neat and trim as a coiffure by the best artist could look, yet it took Bertha at least ten minutes to re-arrange certain tresses to her satisfaction.
“The bar has never been the same since she came,” continued Florrie. “If the men were not such fools they would see through her airs and her graces, for I’m sure her looks are no better than other peoples!” And Florrie tossed her head significantly.
“And the way she carries on is just scandalous. Old men, young men, it’s all the same to her, with her simpering look and Chinaman’s eyes! I would not throw myself at a man like that if he was the only one left in the world. What I say is, that for a girl that respects herself there is a limit.”
“That’s it, Ruby, there’s a limit; and girls that put on the dying duck style to anybody and everybody ought to be shot.”
“I wonder who she is off with now; for sure enough she is not going to leave here for nothing. One of those young sporting fellows she drives out with I should not wonder.”