“No, please, missis,” replied the policeman, acutely divining that his first answer had been found wanting.
“You fool,” said Mrs. Rust, another unoriginal comment wrung from her by the heat.
The policeman understood this, and giggled bashfully in a high falsetto.
“Missis wanta buggy?” asked a tobacconist, with a slightly less dense complexion, from his shop door. “Policeman nevah understand missis, he only a niggah.”
The gardener, as ever prone to paint the lily, hurried into the breach. “Ah yes, of course, we white men, we always hang together, eh?”
It was The Moment of that tobacconist’s life. The gardener all unawares had crossed in one lucky stride those bitter channels that divide the brown man from the black, the yellow man from the brown, the white man from the yellow, and the buckra, the man from England, from all the world.
Three buggies suddenly materialised noisily out of Mrs. Rust’s desire. They were all first upon the scene, as far as one could judge from the turmoil of conversation that immediately arose on the subject. The gardener tried to look firm but unbiassed. The three women stood and waited in a state of trance.
The sun was working so hard at his daily task in the sky, that one could almost have pitied him for being called to such a flaming vocation in this flaming weather.
Finally, Mrs. Rust awoke and, entering the nearest buggy, shook it to its very core as she seated herself and said, “King’s Garden Hotel.”
She could hardly have been recognised as the Mrs. Rust of the Caribbeania. You could see her pride oozing out in large drops upon her brow. Her hat was on one side, and completely hid her sensational hair, but for one flat wisp, like an interrogation mark inverted, which reached damply to her eyebrow.