The Hawk of Egypt | Page 7

I--I am sure it will only turn out to be--well--you, know."
"But, Golliwog dear, I'm the one to be pitied. This makes the--how many is it?"
"I don't know, Dads, and it isn't the number; it's the awful habit they've got into--and I don't understand anything and I don't encourage them, do I? Do lend me a hankie--this chocolate has burst--and what am I to do?"
"Turn a deaf ear, or a cold shoulder, or put a brave face on, until------" said Dads, retrieving his handkerchief.
"Until what?"
"Until the right man comes along, darling, as he surely will."
The girl's lids suddenly dropped until the lashes lay like a fringe upon the white cheek over which very slowly but very surely crept the faintest of rose-colours.
"Hum!" said Dads to himself, as he made great use of the hankie.
"Do smoke, dearest!"
"No, thank you, pet; I couldn't here."
The man who worshipped his wife and adored his little daughter looked round the white and somewhat austere room, and ran his eye over the bookstand at his elbow.
Books on horses, a treatise on bulldogs, the New Testament, essays in French and in German, the History of Egypt in Arabic, Budge's "Book of the Dead," and "King Solomon's Mines."
"But what am I do meanwhile, Dads?" and the girl threw out her hands imploringly.
"Be cold, deaf or brave, Golliwog, as I have suggested."
"But I've been all that, and it's quite useless. Do you think it would help if I let my hair grow and did it up in a tight knob?"
"I think it would help a lot if you shaved your head entirely, kiddie." And the man leant forward and ran his hand through the red curls.
Once upon a time Damaris had read the advertisement of a certain powder guaranteed to darken hair of any colour, and life having been one long torment owing to her violent colouring, she had, greatly daring, acquired a packet; had followed the directions by mixing the powder with water and covering her head with the muddy result, and, "to make assurance doubly sure," had sat with her clay pate for an hour instead of ten minutes near a fire; had cracked the clay, washed her head, and found her hair grass-green.
She had chopped the verdant masses off without a thought, and had ever after refused to allow it to grow to hairpin length, and to her father only had granted the privilege of calling her by the pet name of Golliwog.
"Would you like to travel a bit, pet?" And the man smiled, though his heart was heavy at the thought of the blank which his Golliwog's departure would leave in the home and the daily round.
"Travel! Travel! Oh! darling--to Egypt?
"Why Egypt? Why not France or--or Italy?"
"Because I've got to go to Egypt sometime or another, Dads. I've got to see the desert and the mosques and the whites and blues and oranges and camels. It's in me here," and she thumped her nightgown above her heart. "I shall never be happy until I have seen them all. Oh! Dads, I wonder if you can understand; it--it sounds so--so silly------"
"Tell me," and the man moved over to the head of the bed and took his daughter gently in his arms.
"I'm so out of the picture, somehow, here, dearest," said the child, striving as best she could to describe what was really only the passing of the border-line between girl and womanhood. "This terrible colouring of mine, for one thing. Why, amongst other girls, I am like a Raemaeker stuffed into a Heath Robinson folio, like a palette daubed with oils hung amongst a lot of water-colours. I want to find my own nail and hang for one hour by myself, if it's on a barn-door or the wall of a mosque--as long as I am by myself."
"Good Lord!" said the man inwardly, as he patted his daughter's arm; then, aloud. "As it happens, Golliwog darling, I had a letter from Marraine yesterday, asking me to let you go out to her in Cairo for the winter and see as much as possible of the ordinary sights. We'll talk it over with Mother to-morrow."
"Oh, Dads--how wonderful! And can't you and Mother come? And oh! can I take Wellington?"
"I think so, dear, if he hasn't hydrophobia," and the man bent to pat the head of the great dog which had crept from under the bed at the sound of his name.
And later Dads stood at his window, smoking two last pipes, whilst a glimpse into the future was allowed him.
"Can it be--can it possibly be," he said, puffing clouds of smoke into the creeper, to the annoyance of many insects, "Big Ben Kelham?--and the estates run alongside. Wonder if Teresa has noticed anything. And--by Jove!--of course!--he's at Heliopolis, getting over his hunting accident. I wonder------"
And Damaris sat at