But the brain crowned by the big red hat that had come from the Maison Cluny, and cost a hundred francs, and had been smartened up with a bunch of pink and yellow artificial roses, and three imitation ostrich-tips of a cheerful blue, did not comprehend. Someone who spoke the Taal had written for her. The bilingual young woman who was to be of such use to Walt had only existed in his dreams. And yet--the disappointing creature was exceeding fair.
"Pity you left your eyes be'ind you, Dutchy!" giggled Emigration Jane, deliciously conscious that those rather muddy orbs were glued on her admiringly.
The hair crowned by the screaming hat was waved and rolled over the horsehair frame she had learned to call a "Pompydore"; the front locks, usually confined in the iron cages called "curlers," frizzled wonderfully about her moist, crimson face. She had on a "voylet" delaine skirt, with three bias bands round the bottom, and a "blowse" of transparent muslin stamped with floral devices. Her shoes were of white canvas; her stockings pink and open-worked; her gloves were of white thread, and had grown grey in the palms with agitation. One of them firmly grasped a crimson "sunshyde," with green and scarlet cherries growing out of the end of the stick.
The young Dopper warmly grasped the other, provoking a squeal from the enchantress.
"Mind me bad finger! Lumme! you did give us a squeeze an' a' arf."
"If I shall to hurt you I been sorry, Miss!" apologized the Slabbert.
"All righto, Dutchy!" smiled Emigration Jane. "Don't tear your features." She bestowed a glance of almost vocal disdain upon a Kaffir girl in turkey-red cotton twill, with a green hat savagely pinned upon her woolly hair. At another ebony female who advanced along the sidewalk pushing a white baby in a perambulator she tossed her head. "Funny," she observed, "when I was 'ome I used to swaller all the tales what parsons kep' pitchin' about that black lot 'aving souls like me an' you. When I got out 'ere, an' took my fust place at Cape Town, an' 'eard the Missis and the Master continual sayin', 'Don't do this or that, it ain't Englishwomen's work; leave it to the Caffy,' or 'Call the 'Ottintot gal,' I felt quite 'urt for 'em. Upon me natural, I did! But when I knoo these blackies a bit better, I didn't make no more bones. Monkeys, they are, rigged up in brown 'olland an' red braid, wot 'ave immytated 'uman beings till they've come to talk langwidge wot we can understand, and tumble to our meanings. 'Ow do you like me dress, Walty dear? An' me 'at? That chap what passed with the red mustash said to 'is friend as I looked a bit of fair all right, and no mistake. But I'd rather 'ear you say so nor 'im if you 'ad enough English to do it with. Wot do I care about the perisher along of you?"