The solemn, preoccupied air of the bigger insect, and the plucky onslaught of its tiny foes, at last cause Dina to forget her state of bondage, also the august presence of her mistress, and she bursts into a merry fit of laughter. Her hilarity, however, ceases as suddenly as it commences.
“Dina, what are you doing there?” comes the clear, contralto voice of Miss Mundella.
The culprit stands before “missie” with downcast eyes and trembling figure.
“Your cap is half off your head, and your stockings are coming down. You have forgotten to tie your shoe-laces. And why have you not an apron on? Don’t you remember the flogging you received for forgetting what I told you about your coming to me in an untidy state? Be off and get yourself straight at once, and hurry that lazy Sophy with tiffen. Marmie (master) will soon be back.”
Miss Lileth always refrains from employing that foolish pigeon-English that generally obtains amongst Australian settlers in their conversations with aborigines. And she has found herself perfectly understood and implicitly obeyed since she first arrived at the station, and established her authority by having the house-gins flogged for the slightest misbehaviour, till they were thoroughly “broken into her ways,” as she pleasantly termed it.
Dina, who had come to ask her mistress for leave of absence for the next day, is afraid to do so now, and instead bursts into a theatrical cry, with her knuckles rubbing her eyes and tears rolling down her ludicrously-wrinkled face and dusky bosom. The moment the girl thinks herself out of sight, however, she is transformed into a laughing little nigger once more.
She stands in the passage giggling with all her might at the sight of the youngest house-gin, Lucy, _ætat_ ten summers, who out in the quadrangle at the back is up to one of her favourite tricks. This consists of imitating the ungraceful waddle of that head of the culinary department, “Terrible Billy,” the old man-cook.
Poor little, large-mouthed, wriggling Lucy loves to get behind the spare, hardship-twisted, little old man as he crosses the yard, and burlesque his every action, to the delight of the black heads that appear at the doors and windows, and grin white-teethed plaudits at the little actress’s histrionic powers.