"Billy Keyse?"
"B-i-l-l-y K-e-y-s-e!"
The name went the round of the Red Class. Nobody liked it.
"He must, of course, have been christened William. Shakespeare was a William. The Emperor of Germany," stated Greta loftily, "is a William. Mr. Pitt and Mr. Gladstone were both Williams. Many other great men have been Williams."
"But not Billies," said Christine Silber, provoking a giggle from the greedily-listening White Class.
Greta scorched them into silence with a look, and continued:
"He is by profession a surveyor, not exactly a partner in the firm of Gadd and Saxby, on Market Square, but something very near it." (Do you who read see W. Keyse carrying the chain and spirit-level, and sweeping out the office when the Kaffir boy forgets?). "He saw me walking in the Stad with the Centipede," Greta added.
This was a fanciful name for the whole school of eighty pupils promenading upon its hundred and sixty legs of various nationalities in search of exercise and fresh air.
"Go on!" said the Red Class in a breath, as the White Class giggled and nudged each other, and the Blue Class opened eyes and ears.
"He was knocked dumb-foolish at once, he says, by my eyes and my figure and my hair. He is not long up from Cape Colony: came out from London through chest-trouble, to catch heart-trouble in Gueldersdorp" (do you hear hectic, coughing Billy Keyse cracking his stupid joke?). "And if I'll only be engaged to him, he promises to get rich, become as big a swell on the Rand as Marks or Du Taine—isn't that funny, his not knowing Du Taine is my father?—and drive me to race-meetings on a first-class English drag, with a team of bays in silver-mounted harness, with rosettes the colour of my eyes."