The Hawk of Egypt | Page 7

she talked of horses or
anybody she loved; then her great eyes would flash and her laugh ring
out, also she would gesticulate as her mother had been wont to do, until
the climate, maybe, of a northern country had served to repress the
spontaneity of her Latin mannerisms.
She was simple and unsophisticated and would have made a splendid
little chum, if only one out of every three men who met her had not
been consumed with a desire to annex her for life by means of a gold
ring.
"Dads," she exclaimed, two months before the beginning of this story,
having enticed him to her bedroom one night and offered him cream
chocolates as he eat at the foot of her bed, facing her. "Dads, what am I
to do? Guy Danvers says he is coming to see you to-morrow, and 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