Wild, Wild Heart/Chapter 1

The driver of the service car having deposited Ann, her hatbox, her two suitcases, and her cabin trunk, in front of the Omoana Hotel, swung round and made for the little iron-roofed post office, where he proceeded to throw out the canvas mail bags.

But Ann was no longer interested in the service car. She stood on the veranda of the two-storied wooden building, feeling very hot in the afternoon sunshine and wondering rather forlornly why no one had appeared to welcome her. “Welcome” wasn’t perhaps the right word. She had sufficient commonsense to realize that the arrival of a nursery governess wasn’t an event of any great importance; but she had understood from Mrs. Holmes’s letter that some one would meet her at the Omoana Hotel, and take her on the further seven miles to the station homestead.

Evidently Omoana township ended with the hotel. Certainly the dusty roadway ran on a little further into the tussocky grass of the sandhills, but after a few yards it seemed to lose heart and give up all hope of reaching the beach beyond, where an endless line of breakers rolling in from the blue Pacific fringed the bay with white. The sound of the surf was at least cool and refreshing, but Ann had been hearing that ​sound for the last three hours, and she was tired of it. The coast road along which the service car had traveled from Wairiri seemed to be a road by courtesy only. The car ran for the most part along the hard sand of the seashore, only turning inland where the rocky headlands jutted out into the blue of the ocean. It was a very beautiful coast line, but very lonely too, Ann reflected. Not a house in sight anywhere. Only the sheep on the hills, and the gulls crying over the white breakers, and the wet sand, and the empty wide Pacific. And Omoana itself was little less lonely. The hotel, the post office, the store, a forlorn looking bank, a blacksmith’s forge, a low iron-roofed hall plastered with film posters, a garage, and one or two small wooden houses—all seemed practically deserted. Yet there must be human beings within the shabby wooden walls of the hotel, for a saddled horse was hitched to a post outside the window labeled “BAR,” and three dogs lay snapping at the flies in the sunshine at the horse’s heels. What should she do? Ann wondered. Walk through into the open hall-way and call for some one? Bang loudly on the door? All at once Ann’s stout little heart failed her. She’d spoken so bravely before leaving England of life in a new country; the romance of it—the adventure! Well, she’d had a certain amount of both on the voyage out. But now! A sudden wave of desolation engulfed her. Oh, to be back in the dear old ship again! The dancing, and the deck games, and faithful Bob Greenaway always in attendance!

If by some miracle Bob could materialize here and now, Ann felt that she would hurl herself into his kindly arms and agree to love, honor, and obey like a sensible girl.

​But no miracle happened. Bob was twelve hundred miles away in Sydney. She’d send a cable to him! She wouldn’t go on to these hateful Holmes people! She’d———

The sound of voices interrupted the sequence of these rash resolves. Evidently one or two people had moved into the bar from a passage-way behind the front hall. Through the half-opened door Ann could hear the clink of glasses, and laughter.

“Rod’s keeping up his courage!”

“What for?” asked a woman’s voice.

“Got to drive the old school ma’am back to Tirau in the buggy. She’ll learn you to speak proper, Rod. No bad words, mind!”

“Isn’t Mrs. Holmes bringing in the car?”

“No, Rod’s been told off for the job. Rod’s a good little boy—always does what he’s told.”

There was the sound of a sudden scuffle, and the crash of a broken glass, and then the woman’s voice again, raised sharply:

“None of your skylarking in here! You’ll pay for that glass, Jack.”

“Rod broke it, But Rod don’t pay, of course—Rod’s the white-headed boy at Omoana.”

Ann pushed open the door, and stood in the entrance. The scuffling stopped, and two men and a woman faced her. The men were young—the woman probably in her middle thirties—and it was she to whom Ann spoke.

“Can you tell me how I can reach Mr. Holmes’s station? I’m their governess. I understood that they were meeting me here.”

She already knew how she was to get to her journey’s end. “Rod” was to drive her in the buggy; but ​she deemed it expedient to ignore the conversation she had overheard.

“Why yes—I believe Rodney Marsh is taking you. Isn’t that so, Rod?”

“That’s right.” The taller of the two young men stepped forward. He spoke with a sort of half-sheepish defiance—his old felt hat still on the back of his head. It wasn’t the voice of a gentleman, Ann decided quickly—for according to her standards a man’s social position was usually indicated by his accent—but it wasn’t a common voice; and the man himself was anything but common in appearance. The loose open shirt, and shabby gray trousers belted by a strap, revealed rather than disguised his wonderful physique. Straight featured and fearless-eyed, his clear dark skin tanned to a deeper hue by sun and wind and rain, he might have posed for a statue of untamed youth. A little too untamed perhaps. There was more than a hint of arrogance in the lift of the chin, and the poise of the fine head. “Phœbus, God of the Morning!” thought Ann quickly. “Heavens, what devastating good looks! Still, it’s a pity he doesn’t know that it’s manners to remove his hat.”

But Ann was wrong. Rodney Marsh’s old felt hat pushed on to the back of his head was a deliberate gesture—a challenge to the look she herself had bent upon him.

He knew that she must have heard all that had passed before her entrance, and he was taken at a disadvantage. He wasn’t accustomed to that. Son of an emigrant plowman, he was still king of his own small world, and he’d let her know it.

And so during the seven-mile drive in the rattling buggy, he remained morosely silent; and Ann, tired, ​limp, and dusty, cared not a pin whether he spoke or not.

Mrs. Holmes, cigarette in hand, rose from among the cushions of her deck-chair as Ann mounted the veranda steps. The sun would soon be dropping behind the hills to the left of the homestead, but it was still hot; and across the paddocks, a group of small buildings near the red-painted woolshed and the sheep yards was vividly outlined in the mellowing light. Each big forest tree in the patch of native bush on the bank of the river behind the shed showed up distinct and clear; and beyond, through a gap in the hills, one saw a triangle of sapphire blue—the sea. The low bungalow-like homestead was set on a slope. The flower garden fell in terraces below it—with long shadows of shrubs and trees now slanting across the sun-dried turf of the tennis court.

Ann’s first impression of Vera Holmes was of a haggard, handsome woman with queer dark eyes. “She has a thwarted look,” was the comment that sprang into Ann’s mind, though she couldn’t quite explain to herself what she meant by that.

“Hope you didn’t mind coming in the buggy,” said Mrs. Holmes in a husky drawl, waving the smoke of her cigarette from between them. “I had a bad head, and didn’t feel up to driving the car, and my husband’s out at the back of the run. Frightfully warm for this time of year, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” said Ann. “I’ve only been in New Zealand a week.”

“This is like summer. We’re wanting rain badly.”

A man in riding kit was stretched out lazily in a ​chair beside the one which Mrs. Holmes had just vacated. “That’s not Mr. Holmes then,” thought Ann; but she did not look in his direction.

“Bring the luggage right through, Marsh,” went on Mrs. Holmes; and turning again to Ann: “I expect you’d like to see your room. Have you had any tea?”

Ann shook her head.

“Why didn’t you see that Miss Merrill had tea at Omoana, Marsh?”

“She told Mrs. Bentley she didn’t want it,” returned the young man shortly.

“I thought I’d better not delay.”

“Oh well, I’ll get you a cup. My two domestics are down at the cottage. They live down there.” With a casual movement of her well-shaped hand Vera Holmes indicated the buildings near the woolshed. “I usually let them go for two or three hours in the afternoon. We’re in luck at present—an excellent married couple with a daughter. She’s a somewhat miniature and incompetent housemaid, but we take what the gods—or the Emigration Department—send us, and are thankful.”

They had moved through the central hall, and along a passage leading to the western side of the house, and here in a small bright-papered room Ann’s luggage was deposited. Rodney Marsh made his way out towards the back of the house, and while Mrs. Holmes went off to see about the tea, Ann inspected her domain.

A french window—now flung widely open—led on to a small side veranda, and so to the flower-sweet garden. Beyond her room to the left was a big bedroom which Mrs. Holmes told her belonged to the ​little girls; to the right, two jutting bay windows of what she afterwards found were Mr. Holmes’s bedroom and the smoking-room, respectively, shut her off from the front of the house where Mrs. Holmes and her companion had been sitting when Rodney Marsh had driven the buggy up the drive.

What sort of a woman was Mrs. Holmes, Ann wondered. Quick and as a rule fairly accurate in her judgments, Ann found herself more than a little baffled here. In her short life Ann had met many types, but never any one of this description. Fascinating, yes—but was she honest? Was she kind? She had received the new governess quite amiably, and now brought in the tea-tray herself and stayed for a few moments chatting in the bored and detached manner which seemed an expression of her personality. But was it? Was she not rather very alert and very subtle? When she was left alone with her tea-tray beside her on the veranda, Ann’s thoughts were centered on her new employer. Should they get on together? Ann hoped so, and yet some instinct warned her to go warily. She had learned that as a rule she would be expected to give the litle girls—Biddy, aged eight, and Jo, aged six—their tea in the dining-room about 5.30. Tonight, as they had ridden out with their father to the back of the station, they might be home late, and therefore would have dinner with their elders. Dinner was at 6.15. Yes, earlier than one had it “at Home” (Ann already knew that “Home” with a big “H” signified England), but Mrs. Pratt and Emily liked to get back as soon as possible to the cottage. That was all.

Ann finished her tea and then began unpacking.

A few minutes after six, Ann heard thick-shod small feet stumping into the bathroom; the splashing of water; and a confused murmur of voices. Then a man’s voice—a very gentle, pleasant voice—called:

“Hurry up, young ’ns. Don’t be all night—I want the bathroom.”

“Jo hasn’t washed her knees.”

“Pooh! Who’s going to take the trouble to look under the table at my knees? It’ll be dark soon, anyhow.”

More blurred discussion, and then:

“Come on, Dad—all clear.”

A moment or two later a whispering and a pushing sound outside Ann’s door announced the fact that the two little girls were there. Ann’s eyes twinkled. Curiosity, hampered by indecision, was so obviously expressed in those murmurs and shufflings.

She opened her door. “Were you coming in to see me?”

The two little girls almost fell into the room. They both looked at her with a fixed stare. Then Biddy turned to Jo.

“I’ve won,” she said.

“You didn’t say shingled,” objected Jo.

“No, but you said ‘scraggly hair parted in the middle and specs.’”

“Not parted in the middle.”

“‘A stuffy old thing like Miss Hildred,’ you said.”

“Not ‘stuffy,’—‘snuffy,’ I said.”

“Anyhow she isn’t.”

“Isn’t what?”

“Snuffy.”

​“Oh, well, you can take your old sixpence. I don’t care,” said Jo, suddenly abandoning her untenable line of defense. “Anyhow I’m glad she isn’t like Miss Hildred.”

“Who’s Miss Hildred?” asked Ann.

“She was the one before the last.”

“No, the one before before the last,” corrected Jo. “There’s been so many I’ve lost count. We’ve had five in the last year.”

“That sounds cheerful for me, I must say,” marked Ann. “It’s a pity I bothered to unpack.”

Both the little girls grinned broadly.

“If we like you,” said Biddy, “we won’t get out of hand.”

“Get out of hand indeed! I shall take the thickest stick I can find and wallop you both soundly. That’s the way I’ll teach you to like me!”

Their grins widened.

“I like you now, so you needn’t wallop me,” said Biddy.

“And I love you,” said Jo, suddenly hurling herself into Ann’s arms.

“Jo’s so unrestrained!” said Biddy disgustedly.

“Oh, I’ll soon restrain her,” replied Ann, scowling so fiercely that both little girls shrieked with mirth. This was a new kind of governess. They were prepared to become the devoted slaves of any one who looked as pretty as this, and could make jokes—the sort of jokes they understood.

“But you’re not very old,” said Biddy at last, rather doubtfully.

“Quite old enough. I’m older than you think.”

“You don’t know what I think.”

At this retort Ann laughed, and then the little girls ​laughed too, and they all laughed together, and so were very good friends when the gong sounded, and they went in to dinner.

The blinds had been drawn in the dining-room, and the hanging lamp lighted, although outside it was not yet dark. Neither of the men was in evening dress, but Mrs. Holmes wore a vivid yellow gown with a heavy jade necklace, and jade ear-rings. Ann had thought her handsome at first, but now, in the lamplight, her thin cheeks flushed and her dark eyes shining, she looked beautiful.

Before they sat down Ann was introduced.

“Dick, this is Miss Merrill,” and:

“Miss Merrill—Mr. Waring.”

Mr. Waring was “Gerald” apparently to all the family—even to Jo. Ann concluded that he was the man who had been sitting with Mrs. Holmes on the veranda when she arrived, but she was not quite sure whether he was a relative or a friend. He was no longer in riding clothes, and from this Ann imagined that he must be staying in the house. He was good-looking, tall and fair; very sure of himself and amusing in a rather sarcastic, deliberate way. He addressed no remarks to Ann throughout the meal, and she remained silent for the most part; for the conversation dealt chiefly with the coming shearing, the lack of rain, the polo match against Omoana on Saturday afternoon, and the neighbors; and on all of these subjects Ann had no opinions to offer.

Dick Holmes struck her as being indefinite—both in appearance and in manner. He was gentle, shy, and a trifle awkward, but he had kind eyes, and a nice voice, and it was quite evident that the two children adored him.

​“Did you get to Bentley’s before the service car?” he asked his wife towards the end of the meal.

“I didn’t go,” she answered. “I had a bad head, and sent Marsh in with the buggy.”

“Why didn’t you let him take the car?”

“The ponies had to be shod, so I thought he could kill two birds with one stone.”

Dick Holmes turned to Ann.

“I hope you didn’t find the old buggy too uncomfortable.”

“Oh, no, it was quite all right.”

“We don’t often use the buggy. But some of the roads round here are unmetaled, and we can’t take the car out on them in wet weather, so the ponies have to be kept in commission.”

“Is Marsh playing for Tirau on Saturday?” asked Waring.

“Yes, I think so.”

“It’s ridiculous the way you spoil that boy,” put in Mrs. Holmes impatiently. “After all, he’s only a working man—a shepherd.”

“Head-shepherd.”

“Oh, well, it’s the same thing.”

“Rodney wouldn’t agree with you—and he’s a rattling good polo player. We’ve got to play the strongest team we can get hold of at Wairiri.”

“The young Adonis! You’ll find all the girls will be tumbling over each other to dance with him at the Polo Ball,” said Waring. “He’ll be resplendent in white kid gloves and a ready-made dinner jacket.”

“Surely he won’t be invited to the ball!” Vera Holmes spoke sharply.

“Why not, if he’s a member of the Coast Team?” asked her husband. He never raised his voice. His ​gentle manner was a queer contrast to Waring’s caustic tones.

“He’s conceited enough as it is! There’ll be no holding him if he’s chosen for the Coast Team and allowed to go down to Wairiri for the Tournament.”

“He’s a good lad.”

“So you always say. Personally I think he’s a wild young rip. Drinking and gambling and...carrying on with that awful Mrs. Bentley...”

Holmes lifted his eyebrows at her with a little side glance at the children, who were both eagerly listening.

“Yes, I know he likes Mrs. Bentley,” said Biddy. “He gave her the silver cup Nigger won for jumping at the Sports.”

“Emily told us,” chirruped Jo.

“It’s quite time you youngsters were in bed,” said their father. “What about baths?”

“Oh, they can’t have them just after the enormous meal they’ve eaten.”

“Jo’ll have to wash her knees anyhow—they’re filthy.”

“They’re not filthy. It’s only clean mud—where I fell in the creek.”

Ann took them both off.

She could hear them chattering together from their beds in the next room as she sat before her writing-table in the twilight. The windows were still open to the garden, where the crickets shrilled, and the scent of the stocks and tobacco plants in the border came in to her. The moths came in too, clustering thickly ​round the lamp she had lighted. In spite of the children’s chatter Ann felt very desolate and very homesick. She was alone, a stranger in a strange land. Far away some bird was calling mournfully—a weka she knew it to be afterwards—a horse neighed down in one of the paddocks, and from the hills around came the lonely and plaintive bleating of distant sheep. Through the blue gums of the plantation on her left a little breeze sighed sadly. Ann took up her pen. She’d write to Bob. She knew it would be kinder not to do so—she ought to allow him to forget her—but she was feeling so forlorn that she must speak to some one, some friend. Her stiff little letter to her father announcing her arrival in Wairiri had been written the previous night. Her stepmother wouldn’t want to hear. “My dear Bob!” She sat balancing her pen in her hand. He’d told her that if she ever changed her mind: No, she wouldn’t write. It wasn’t fair. She liked him and respected him, but she didn’t love him. Well, what was love? Did that wild passionate attachment exist outside the pages of romantic novels? Probably it didn’t—and in any case if it did, nine girls out of ten didn’t find it. She wasn’t a stupid, sentimental schoolgirl pining for love; but at the present moment she did undoubtedly feel very lonely and deserted, and would have welcomed a little human companionship. She wished Mrs. Holmes had suggested her joining them in the drawing-room. Oh, well! There didn’t seem anything left for her to do but take a book from the little bookshelf on the wall, and read herself to sleep. But as she rose from the writing-table there was a knock at her door, and Mrs. Holmes entered. As usual she was smoking.

“Have you got everything you want? Oh, you’d ​better close the wire doors on your window, or your room will be full of flying beasts.” Crossing the room as she spoke she pulled-to the netted frames. “We haven’t many mosquitoes up here, thank goodness”

She moved restlessly about the room for a moment.

“Are these your photographs?”

“Yes, that’s my father.”

“And this?”

“My stepmother.”

“Why did they allow you to come out here by yourself? You’re only a baby.”

“I’m twenty-three.”

“You look about seventeen—I’d never have engaged you if I’d known you were so young. That Educational Bureau, or whatever they call themselves, in Wellington, didn’t mention your age.”

“Do you mean you’re not—not satisfied?”

Mrs. Holmes shrugged.

“If you can manage the children it’ll be all right I suppose—and they seem to have taken a fancy to you.”

She turned, and suddenly her voice lost its lazy drawl, and was shaken and impatient, as it had been at dinner when she spoke of Rodney Marsh.

“If I sent you away I suppose kind friends would say that I was jealous of you because you’re so young and pretty.”

For a moment Ann was taken aback; then she answered quite simply:

“Why should you be jealous when you look...so...so beautiful yourself?”

A quick light sprang into Mrs. Holmes’s dark eyes.

“Do you mean that? Yes”—she said slowly, answering her own question—“you do. Your eyes are truth​ful. I was good-looking once. Oh, I loathe growing old. No! don’t say anything more, you’d spoil it.”

Again her voice resumed its normal tone:

“Didn’t your father object to your coming all this way—to the other side of the world?”

“No,” said Ann truthfully. “I was the youngest of the first family, and there’s another small family now—my stepmother’s children—I wasn’t wanted at home.”

“Haven’t you any brothers and sisters of your own?”

“Yes, but they’re much older and they’re married, and have children themselves. They don’t take much interest in me.”

“You’ve been a nursery governess before?”

“Yes, for eighteen months. And I worked as a typist for a year.”

“You’re enterprising.”

Ann laughed.

“Oh, I learned millinery too! I should love to have gone on with that—had a shop of my own. But it’s so hard to start anything like that in London—the competition’s awful. Still, my millinery lessons weren’t wasted. I save quite a lot doing my own hats.”

Mrs. Holmes’s face lit up again.

“Did you trim that hat you wore today when you arrived?”

“I made it.”

“The whole thing?”

Ann nodded.

“Oh, but it was a little lamb! Will you make me some hats?”

“Of course I will.”

“What joy to get something decent to put on one’s ​head. I love clothes and I have a passion for hats, and one can’t get anything decent in Wairiri. How I ache sometimes for London again, and the shops! If you can supply me with pretty hats, I don’t care what you teach the children.”

She picked up another photograph.

“And who is the nice-looking young man?”

“He traveled on the ship with me.”

“I suppose he wanted to marry your”

Ann did not answer for a moment.

“Oh, of course he did,” said Mrs. Holmes. “They all do...on ships. Did you say yes?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t love him.”

Vera Holmes gave a sudden hard laugh.

“Love!” she echoed. But she put the photograph down, and said no more on the subject.

“Those two men are talking sheep as usual,” she went on abruptly. “Wool and mutton, mutton and wool! That’s all men ever talk about in this country. What price did Smith’s wool fetch, and how much did Jones get for his fat lambs from the Works? I suppose you can’t play bridge, can you? That would be too much to hope for.”

“Of course I can,” said Ann.

“Oh, thank God,” murmured Mrs. Holmes. “Come along and we’ll end that interminable discussion of wool and mutton and hogets and two-tooths.”

So Ann’s evening ended very much more cheerfully than it had begun, for she played five good rubbers, at the end of which she was richer by the whole sum of ninepence. But as she got into bed that night she reflected that though she had not yet decided in her ​own mind whether Mrs. Holmes was either honest or kind, there was one thing her new employer decidedly was not. She was not happy.

Ann had her early cup of tea brought to her by Emily, the fifteen-year-old housemaid, next morning before seven o’clock. A few minutes afterwards Biddy and Jo ran along the veranda in their pajamas, and informed her, through the wire-netting of her open french window, that if she liked they would show her the schoolroom before breakfast.

“It’s not in the house, you know,” said Biddy. “It’s in a whare up on the hill higher ’a the stockyard.”

“What’s a whare?” asked Ann.

Jo’s rotund little form spun round like a top in an ecstasy of mirth.

“Doesn’t know what a whare is!” she chortled.

“It’s a house—a little house—of course.”

“Don’t be silly, Jo. How would Miss Merrill know? They don’t talk Maori in England, do they, Miss Merrill?”

“I never heard any.”

“Dan’s a Maori—Dan the cowboy. He cooked for the men at the cottage before Mrs. Pratt was there. He milks, and feeds the fowls, and the pigs, and sometimes...”

“Oh, do be quiet, Jo! Miss Merrill doesn’t want to hear all that stupid rubbish.”

“It isn’t stupid rubbish.”

A heated argument ensued. But half an hour later Ann, with a little girl dangling from either hand, was making her way through the garden beyond the east​ern veranda towards the whare. This was an old three-roomed cottage set higher up the slope among the trees; and from the schoolroom, which was in the front of the building, one looked down upon stockyard, stables, and garage; and then across the paddocks to the woolshed, the sheep yards, and all the buildings clustered there. There had been heavy rain in the night, but now the sunshine was brilliant and clear, and larks were singing high up in the blue. Already the paddocks and the tennis court looked more freshly green, and the flowers washed and shining. Down by the woolshed cattle were moving in the sunshine, dogs barked, and there was the crack of a stockwhip from a galloping horseman as one beast broke away from the mob.

“That’s Rodney drafting cattle,” said Biddy, looking down. “He’s the best rider on the coast.”

“What about Dad?” demanded Jo, fiercely.

“Rodney’s better than Dad—Dad says so himself. He’s got better hands.”

“Pooh! Dad’s the best rider in New Zealand—the best in the world.”

Another heated argument arose. Ann restored peace by dragging a red herring across the scent.

“Where does that other door lead to?”

“That? Oh, that’s Gerald’s room. He doesn’t live here, you know. But he leaves his clothes and things there, so as he can change for polo practice.”

Biddy’s brows were drawn down in a scowl.

“I love Gerald,” announced Jo.

“You say that because he gives you chocolates.”

“No, I’d love him just the same if he didn’t give me nothing.”

“I hate him.”

​“Oh, Biddy! He’s Daddy’s best friend. You know Mummy whipped you for saying that.”

“I don’t care! I hate him, so there. Why doesn’t he bring his own ponies over from Kopu instead of riding Belle? I hate him.”

“All right—but don’t make so much noise about it.”

Waring himself opened the inner door, and stepped out into the schoolroom.

Biddy’s jaw dropped, and the scarlet ran from neck to brow.

“I thought you went home last night,” she stammered.

Jo was again doubling herself up and dancing round, choking with laughter. What a joke! He’d actually heard Biddy say she hated him! Biddy moved to the open door.

“Dan’s going to feed the new chickens,” she said, and sped down the hill as fleetly as a deer.

“Wait for me! Wait for me!” shrieked Jo, tumbling down the slope as fast as her fat little legs could carry her.

“Amiable child!” observed Waring.

“All children say silly things of that sort at times. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“She resents my riding one of her father’s ponies for polo practice. She’s an objectionable kid.”

Ann contradicted him.

“She’s a dear little girl, really.”

“It’s your job to say that.”

“I shouldn’t say it if I didn’t think it.”

Suddenly the man laughed.

“You’re far too pretty to be a school ma’am,” he said coolly, “and you’re only a kid yourself.”

Ann was conscious of a little flash of temper, but ​when she spoke her voice was quite even and unconcerned.

“I’m getting a trifle tired of remarks as to my juvenile appearance,” she said. “First Biddy, then Mrs. Holmes, and now you. As a matter of fact, I’m twenty-three.”

“So old!” he mocked. “Well, I’m thirty-five. Almost old enough to be your father.”

“Old enough at least to have learned not to be impertinent,” she returned calmly.

At this he laughed again, and moved to the open doorway and stood there—not actually blocking her exit, but making it difficult for her to leave without pushing past him.

“Are we beginning to quarrel?” he asked, smiling at her with a sort of lazy insolence. “I’d hate to quarrel with anything as pretty as you are.”

“It’s charming of you to insist so on my prettiness.”

“Yes, isn’t it? I thought you’d like my candor. Most women do.”

At that Ann laughed. After all, it was much better to take his impudence as a joke.

“My beauty seems to have burst upon you rather suddenly. It wasn’t apparent last night.”

“Oh, yes it was,” he answered. “Don’t you make any mistake about that.”

What was she to do? How end this foolish scene?

“Mr. Waring,” she said, turning to him quite frankly, “you think it’s amusing to tease me, but I think it’s a little unkind. I can’t get out of that door without pushing past you.”

“I don’t object being pushed.”

“I wasn’t brought up to push.”

“There’s the window,” he suggested, “you might ​climb out of that—or go out by way of my room. But no, I shouldn’t do that. It might give rise to gossip.”

He turned as he spoke, and she was free to make her way past him through the door. But the tone of his last remark had annoyed her more than all the rest. How was she to treat him? Thank goodness he didn’t live at Tirau!

Yet at breakfast, when they met again, he gave not the slightest sign of any previous encounter with her. He said “Good morning,” politely; and after that never once glanced in her direction.

“He can’t be snobbish enough to be ashamed of being friendly with the governess,” she thought. “In this year of grace that’s surely rather ‘vieux jeu.’” But she was quite satisfied to be ignored. She told herself that she had no desire to claim his notice further.