"An egg," Hansie answered innocently.
He shouted with laughter.
"Are you sure?"
"Of course."
"Well, we are just as sure dat Miss van Warmelo wrote dat article. And if you want to see your work in print I'll bring it round dis very afternoon."
"I should like very much to see it," she replied.
That afternoon, just before Mr. Cinatti was expected, Gentleman Jim killed a big snake in his room, and Hansie, thinking to give her funny friend a fright for misdoubting her word, "arranged" the corpse on the steps of the front verandah, hiding the mutilated head under the leaves of the violet plants.
But the Consul came late, and other visitors before him heralded their arrival by shrieks and jumps, to the great delight of the mischievous girl.
"You are a very pranky little sing," Mr. Cinatti said, flourishing the Westminster Gazette before her eyes, "and den you want us not to believe dat you wrote dis."
And indeed, when Hansie glanced through the article, she found it difficult to maintain that she had not written it, for there were all her "pet" cases of overcrowding and underfeeding, her statistics, and the very terms she was in the habit of using when speaking of the volunteer nurses. She called them a "set of agitators," in sarcastic imitation of the Commandant's favourite expression.