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Promenade

[section]

Beside the cooking trench where bubbling iron pots sent up their thin steam to a hot sky Darien's mind was clawing resentfully over her grievances while she nursed her bandaged leg and the great red-and-green kaka parrots screamed at her out of the puriri-tree. She had only tried to help Sally scald a little wild suckling-pig, and she hadn't cried so very much when the boiling water went over her leg. Not enough to make Sally ill; though Lady Lovel, hurrying over from the further hut when fat old Ani ran for her, blamed Darien, and for hours everyone had ignored her, and she was utterly famished with hunger.

But never would she go in the hut again since that stiff black rig of a Peregrine had boxed her ears in the doorway. I'll die first, she thought, feeling that that wouldn't take long now, and hoping that all the traders would cry at her funeral. A heavy hasty step sounded up the manuka-track from the Beach, and Darien looked round hopefully, clearing the red curls from her eyes. Perhaps it was a giaour out of the “Keepsakes,” bringing delicate food in a golden bowl to offer it on his knees with glances of respect and admiration. “Deign to eat, fair lady,” he would say….

But he only said: “How is she?” And it wasn't a giaour (who would have had a scarlet cloak), but Nick Flower the trader who—one felt quite sure—had never gone on his knees in his life, and the only gold about him was his hair.

“My leg still hurts shocking,” said Darien. Flower page 20 looked at her with his little blue eyes like gimlets, looked at the little raupo-reed hut polished by the sun like a brown snail-shell, said hastily:

“You shouldn't be here, child. Go over to Lady Lovel's.”

“I won't. She's here anyway. And I hate her.” Lady Lovel's black ringlets were so glossy, her cheeks so red, her bust and arms so big that Darien knew she was vulgar. “I dislike vulgarity,” she said, loftily.

“You little …” He stopped, a flicker of amusement crossing his hard face. “A young lady who knows her mind, ain't you? Come down to the Beach, then.”

“I'll do as I like. My leg hurts.” Flower scratched his head. The child should be out of this, but what would tempt her? Maybe all women were alike and he knew how to handle Maoris.

“I'm unpacking some new things. Come down and I'll give you a bonnet.”

“What kind of bonnet?”

Ah! That had her. What wouldn't females do for finery?

“A … a big bonnet with a feather.”

“Could it be drawn-silk? A green one with a yellow feather?”

“If I have one. What's wrong with your leg?” Here was sympathy at last.

“I've scalded it so badly I fear it will drop off. But Sally went and got ill before she finished binding it, and I've been suffering all alone.”

“The bonnet will cure that, I guess. Come along.” You damned little egoist, he thought, fumbling in his great side-pocket, looking towards the hut. For all his daily-growing hate of black Peregrine Lovel he greatly desired to offer an oblation to that fair gallant little lady of his, caught too soon in her hour. A young tender thing who should have been set in a gilded house, playing of the virginals instead of lugging the huge goashore pots page 21 from the cooking-trench, baking, washing, mending, bearing progeny to Peregrine Lovel. A child, running and laughing with Darien and the Maori children when first they came, and he knew her for a rarer thing than ever he had seen before. Now those sweet blue eyes might soon close in death ….

Sheepishly he walked over to the door, laid a small japanned box of the precious tea (near worth its weight in gold) on the step, and returned, so shaken by Sally's low moaning that he jerked Darien roughly to her feet.

“Come on,” he said angrily.