"Are you coming for that ride or not, Berlie? I'm sick of scorching indoors." There were, indeed, two spots of flame in her cheeks.
"Oh, Gay, I can't; I am too G. I. for anything." "G. I." is Rhodesian for "gone in," a common condition for both men and women and things in that sprightly land of nicknames and nick-phrases.
"Wait a minute--I'll come down with you!" said Beryl, and, rushing to the mirror over the mantel, began to pat her pretty _cendré_ hair flat to her head, in unconscious imitation of Mrs. Hading's coiffure.
The two girls went downstairs together. Beryl's arm thrust through her friend's. Gay's horse stood at the side entrance, facing the staircase. She instinctively quickened her pace as they reached the lounge door, but, before she could pass, it opened, and Mrs. Hallett came out.
"Oh, I was just coming to look for you girls. Mrs. Scott is in from Umvuma, Gay, and dying to see you."
Gay gave an inward groan. Mrs. Scott was an old friend of her dead mother's, and about the only woman in the world for whom the girl would have entered the lounge at that moment. As it was, she followed Beryl's mother swiftfoot through the swing door, very upright and smart in her glossy tan riding-boots, knee-breeches, and graceful long coat of soft tan linen. In the matter of riding-kit, Gay always went nap. A ball or day gown she might wear until it fell off her back, but when it came to habits, she considered nothing too good or too recent for her.
For a moment, Marice Hading looked away from the man who sat opposite, amusing her with apt and cynical reflections on life in Rhodesia, and shot a soft, dark glance at the straight back of the girl in riding-kit. Her cleverly appraising eye took in, with the instantaneousness of photography, every detail of Gay's get-up, and her brain acknowledged that she had seldom seen a better one either in Central Park or Rotten Row. But no expression of any such opinion showed in her weary, disdainful eyes or found its way to her lips, for in the art of using language to conceal her thoughts, Marice Hading had few rivals. What she said to Druro, whose glance had also wandered that way, was:
"One cannot help noticing what a hard-riding, healthy-looking crowd the women of this country are."