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Updated: May 5, 2025
Flora liked this funny little dining-room with walls as frail as box-boards, low-ceiled and flooded with sun. It recalled surroundings she had known later than the mining camp, but long before the great red house. It seemed to her that she fitted here better than the Purdies. She looked across at Kerr, sitting opposite, to see if perhaps he fitted too. But he was foreign, decidedly.
He put into her hands the loose bunch of syringa and rose plucked for her in the Purdies' garden, laid his hat and gloves on the parapet; then, with an eye for the better bank, walked to the end of the bridge. She watched him descending the steep bank and issuing into the broad shallow basin of the stream's way.
Further on, beyond the trees, two figures, smaller than Clara's in their greater distance, were coming down. Flora almost grinned as she recognized the large linen umbrella that Mrs. Purdie invariably carried when abroad in the reservation, and presently the trim and bounding figure of Mrs. Purdie herself, under it. The Purdies were coming down to parade at least Mrs. Purdie was.
Our course had been generally west by south; and from our camp, the eastern extreme of Point Bell, bore S. 28 degrees W., and the centre of the "Purdies Islands" E. 49 degrees S. November 14. Upon moving on this morning, we were obliged to keep more to the north to avoid some salt lakes and low swamps near the coast.
"I am going to drive over to the Purdies'," Clara explained. "I have an errand there." Flora smiled at the thought of how many persons would be having errands to the Purdies' now. It was refreshing to catch Clara in this weakness. She felt a throb of it herself when she recalled the breathless moment at the supper table last evening. "Oh, that will be a heavenly drive," she said.
Then silence came again. After this had held for a few moments, the pose said: "Do say something!" "Something," said Peter. "Anything else I can do for you?" "Unless you can be more entertaining, we might as well be sitting in the Purdies' dressing-rooms, as standing here. Suppose we go to the library and sit with mamma and papa?" Clearly the pose felt nervous. Peter did not like this idea.
But as soon as silence fell between them she saw that wave of preoccupation which had submerged him during their walk from the parade-ground to the Purdies' rising over him again and floating him away from her. He no longer even looked at her.
She realized, all at once, that he had become a personage; and then, by smiles, by lifted eyebrows, by glances, she gathered that her name was being linked with his. She was astonished. How could their luncheon together at the Purdies', their words that night in the opera box, their few minutes' talk in the shop, have crystallized into this gossip?
"I'll just run up to the Purdies' and leave this," she said. "Then she really did want to be rid of me," Flora mused, as she watched the brisk back moving away; "and how beautifully she has done it!" Her eyes followed Clara's little figure retreating up the neat and narrow board walk, to where it disappeared in overarching depths of eucalyptus trees.
Trunks still stood in the hall, though the Purdies had been quartered at the Presidio for nine months. From the rear of the house came the sound of bowl and chopper, where the Chinese cook was preparing luncheon, and the major's man appeared, walking around the garden to the veranda, with a cluster of mint juleps on a copper tray.
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