Some Everyday Folk and Dawn | Page 8

inspection."
"Who is Mrs Bray?"
"She won't let you overlook who she is, and what she owns, and what
she 'done,' you'll soon hear it. She's the most inquisitive blow-hard I
ever came across."
Dawn now appeared and invited me to afternoon tea, which was a
friendly and hospitable meal spread on a big table on a back verandah,
so enclosed by creepers and pot-plants and little awnings leading in
various directions as to be in reality more of a vestibule. Mrs Bray hove
into near view and took up a seat beside a bank of lovely maiden-hair
fern.
"How are you living?" she asked Grandma Clay as she complacently
shook hands. "Nice cool weather now and not so many beastly
mosquitoes."
"By Jove! Did you know about the 'skeeters' here?" inquired Andrew of
me. "They're big enough to ride bikes and weigh a pound. You wait till
you hear 'em singing Sankey's hymns to-night."

"If I were you I'd hold my tongue and not draw attention to my
dirtiness," said Dawn. "It's a wonder a garden doesn't sprout upon you."
I was then introduced to Mrs Bray, who acknowledged me genially,
and seemed so flourishing, and was so complacent regarding the fact,
that it did one good to look at her.
After addressing a few remarks to me she had to move, for the
trimming of her hat caught in the cage of a parakeet, and she took
another seat in the shelter of a tree-fern near Uncle Jake.
"You have some lovely pet birds," I remarked by way of making
myself agreeable to Grandma Clay.
"The infernal old nuisances!" she said irascibly, "I wish they'd die.
Andrew calls them his, but they'd starve only for me. I'm always saying
I'll have no more pets, and still they're brought here. Some day when he
has a home of his own and people plague him, he'll know what it is."
On the other side of the verandah above Uncle Jake stretched a passion
vine, where a thick row of belated fruit hung like pretty pale-green eggs,
and evil entering Andrew's mind, he remarked to me--
"Wouldn't it be just bosker if one of them fell on his old nut," and going
out he returned with a pair of orange clippers.
"Where's Carry got to?" asked grandma.
"I saw her out there doing a mash with Larry Witcom," said Andrew.
"Now, do you think there'll be anything in that?" interestedly asked Mrs
Bray. "I suppose she'd be glad to ketch anything for a home of her
own."
"Well, it's to be hoped the home she'd catch with him would be better
than some of the meat we've caught from him lately--it was as tough as
old boots," put in Dawn.
At this point Andrew succeeded in disturbing Uncle Jake--succeeded

beyond expectation. Uncle Jake had just sucked his fuzzy 'possum-grey
moustache in the noisy manner peculiar to him, and was raising his tea
again, when he was struck by the passion fruit, causing him to let fall
the cup.
"Just like you! On the clean boards! Carry will be pleased. I'm glad it's
not my week in the house," said Dawn. What Uncle Jake said is unfit
for insertion in a record so respectable as this is intended to be, and
grandma seemed to grow too agitated for verbal utterance, but her
facial expression was very fiery indeed as Andrew and Uncle Jake
withdrew and settled their little score in a manner unknown to the
company.
"Well, it's an ill wind that don't blow nobody no good, and though
there's a cup broke, it's got us rid of the men, and there's never no
talking in comfort where they are," remarked Mrs Bray, who had a
facility for constructing sentences containing several negatives. Two,
we learn in syntax, have the effect of an affirmative, but there being no
reference to a repletion, only that her utterances were unmistakably
plain, Mrs Bray might have reduced one to wondering the purport of
her remarks.
"Did you hear the latest?" she said, laughing boisterously. "You don't
know the people yet," she continued, turning to me, "half of 'em want
scalding."
Here she burst into a full flood of gossip regarding the misconduct of
the leading residents; but honest and straightforward though her
communications were, I cannot include them here, for this is a story for
respectable folk, and a transcript of the straight talk of the most
respectable folk would be altogether out of the question. I must confine
myself to the statement that Mrs Bray had found few beyond reproach,
and "the latest," as she termed it, concerned one Dr Tinker, whose
wife--known colloquially as the old Tinkeress--had recently
administered a public horsewhipping to a young lady whom the doctor
had too ardently admired. Mrs Bray