PORTRAIT OF A GIRL.

Waikato Times, Volume 105, Issue 17750, 29 June 1929, Page 13 (Supplement)

PORTRAIT OF A GIRL.

SHE is nearly always ten minutes late for breakfast. We sit roUnd the table like Wordsworth’s “party In a parlour." Somebody says; “Perhaps she hasn't heard the gong?” Somebody else says: “Bound to, unless she's one of the' Seven Sleepers.” The silence deepens. Suddenly there is a stampede on the stairs, and a pair of light-coloured legs ending in absurd furry moccasins, an abbreviated skirl, the rest of Van, and a wildly barking Ching Su descend in inextricable confusion.

Kippers? Bacon? Certainly not. If, as Van supposes, there is no grape-fruit in this benighted house, then she will have a piece of dry toast and a cup of coffee. Somebody "says: “Slim silhouette, I suppose?” but Van is far too deep in thought to attend to such trivialities. Somebody else says: “Have a good time last night?” and she brings her mind down so far as to nod absently.

Caterpillar and a Cabbage. “Usual crowd,” she says languidly. Suddenly her eye brightens. “Oh, my clears,” she says, “I simply must tell you about Evie's new frock. Exactly like a green caterpillar crawling out of a cabbage. I felt quite a delicacy about looking at her.” She ripples with laughter. “And poor old Ted in his dress clothes. Like a penguin with a bulging shirt-front. I simply couldn’t have danced with him. I should have had to throw him a fish or something.” There is something irridescent about Van, like bubbles on champagne. Now she is the Vicar taking the girls’ class (“You know, girls, I want you to get this idea in your mind's eye. You all know what a mind's eye is, don’t you?”), and now old Marson telling off poor Ted for being sent down from college “for nothing at all but tying a pink frill on the Dean’s statue, poor .lamb." She spills a drop of coffee on her dress and says “Damn!” with perfect equanimity and a charming lack of malice. ‘ The clock strikes ten. “Good heavens, she says, “is that the time? I’ve four committee meetings and a Mothers’ Union, and what the dickens I’m to talk to ’em about I haven’t the least idea. No time even for a cigarette, worse luck.” In five minutes she comes flying downstairs, attache case bumping as she runs. The front door bangs, feet race along -he path, and the little car chugs violently. Heaven help the mothers!

Vivid and Provocative,

At lunch-time she is back again, extraordinarily vivid and provocative as she stands by the door, head thrown back, chin slightly tilted, the scarlet of her jumper repeated in her cheeks and lips. A thin spiral of smoke curls from her cigarette one hand rests, lightly on her hip. 1 Bather that the committees were mostly male and of an incredible stodginess. “Toreador! Oh. Toreador!" , . After lunch she disappears upstairs. So does the newest library book. About 4.30 she saunters into the drawing room,

A Day In Her Life.

(By Dora M. Broome.)

demands fresh tea, and is abominably ruda to young Benson, the junior curate, who has" been sitting hopefully waiting since three. Van collects curates as wiser people butterflies. They flutter after her in the street like dried leaves, and chatter like a rnurmuration of starlings. I am not in the least sorry for young Benson. He is much too good-looking, and he knows it. Besides, I have been entertaining him for over an hour.

About five o’clock she softens, and allows her attention to be diverted from Ching Su, to whom she has hitherto devoted herself, but before the infatuated young man can realise his good fortune she has dismissed him abruptly, on the plea of a headache. “Besides,” she says cruelly, . “I’m meeting Joan at the Palais at nine."

Demure In Furs. In about five minutes she comes downstairs, demure in black and furs except for the gay little gilt-tipped feather in her hat. “Aren’t you coming with me?" she says, looking at me with large eyes. “Where?” I inquire patiently. “To church, of course,” says Van. She appears mildly surprised. “Had you forgotten it’s a saint’s day?" There is a tinge of reproach in her voice. . . We overtake Miss Crathie on the road. She is seventy-five, and has bad legs and a glassy eye. She says without preliminary: “It’s going to rain, and I’ve got my best hat on, and my legs are something cruel. I think there’s a touch'of frost in the air, and the wind’s in the east. Don’t you think thei Vicar’s getting rather High?" ... As we thankfully drop her down h side street, I say, “Wretched old bore! i don’t see how you can be so sweet to her, Van.” “Oh, poor old thing,” says Van, “Perhaps you and I’ll be old one day.” The ships riding at anchor in the old harbour have bobbing green and yellow lights; down a winding side street.an oldfashioned hanging lamp gleams like a glowworm.

“Isn’t life beautiful?" says Van softly

Johnny Papers, at the corner, has one tooth and three hairs. He shows them all as he sweeps off his cap and calls down the blessing of seventeen holy saints on Van’s head.

“Indiscriminate giving,” I say severely, “is .nine points of destitution.” “Oh, poor old thing,” says Van.

The Face of a Saint. I glance sideways at her as she sits beside me in churoh. Her face is the face of a saint in a stained-glass window. She sings hymns in a low, rich contralto full of the sorrows of a thousand years. Coming out it is dark, and the yellow lights twinkle. Van's face is a pale oval in her furs, her eyes are shadowy, her.lips have a tender curve. At the corner wo pass a lighted tobacconist’s. She grasps my arm. “I’m simply dying for a cigarette,” she says. And after a second, apropos of nothing, "Oh, my dear. Don’t these modern girls make one feel too awfully oldfashioned for anything?" .They du. '•