The Black Opal - Katharine Susannah Prichard (open ebook .TXT) 📗

And now Sophie was dressing in Mrs. Woods’ bedroom because it had a bigger mirror than her own room, and the three women were watching her, giving little tugs and pats to the dress now and then, measuring it with appraising glances of conscious pride in their workmanship, and joy at Sophie’s appearance in it. Sophie, her face flushed, her eyes shining, turned to them every now and then, begging to know whether the skirt was not a little full here, or a little flat there; and they pinched and pulled, until it was thought nothing further could be done to improve it.

Sophie was anxious about her hair. She had put it in plaits the night before, and had kept it in them all the morning. Her hair had never been in plaits before, and she had not liked the look of it when she saw it all crisp and frizzy, like Mirry Flail’s. She had used a wet brush to get the crinkle out, but there was still a suggestion of it in the heavy dark wave of her hair when she had done it up as usual.

“Your hair looks very nice⁠—don’t worry any more about it, Sophie,” Martha M’Cready had said.

“My mother used to say there was nothing nicer for a young girl to wear than white muslin,” Mrs. Woods remarked, “and that sash of your mother’s looks real nice as a belt, Sophie.”

The sash, a broad piece of blue and green silk shot like a piece of poor opal, Sophie had found in a box of her mother’s, and it was wound round her waist as a belt and tied in a bow at the side.

“Turn round and let me see if the skirt’s quite the same length all round, Sophie,” Mrs. Grant commanded.

“Yes, Maggie,” Bessie Woods exclaimed complacently. “It’s quite right.”

Sophie glanced at herself in the glass again. Mrs. Woods had lent her a pair of opal earrings, and Maggie Grant the one piece of finery she possessed⁠—a round piece of very fine black opal set in a rim of gold, which Bill had given her when first she came to the Ridge.

Sophie had on for the first time, too, a necklace she had made herself of stones the miners had given her at different times. There was a piece of opal for almost every man on the fields, and she had strung them together, with a beautiful knobby Potch had made her a present of for her eighteenth birthday, a few days before, in the centre.

Just as she had finished dressing, Mrs. Watty Frost called in the doorway: “Anybody at home?”

“Come in,” Mrs. George Woods replied.

Mrs. Watty walked into the bedroom. She had a long slender parcel wrapped in brown paper in her hand, but nobody noticed it at the time.

“My!” she exclaimed, staring at Sophie; “we are fine, aren’t we?”

Sophie caught up her long, cotton gloves and pirouetted in happy excitement.

“Aren’t we?” she cried gaily. “Just look at my gloves! Did ever you see such lovely long gloves, Mrs. Watty? And don’t my earrings look nice? But it does feel funny wearing earrings, doesn’t it? I want to be shaking my head all the time to make them joggle!”

She shook her head. The blue and green fires of the stones leapt and sparkled. Her eyes seemed to catch fire from them. The women exchanged admiring glances.

“Where’s my handkerchief?” Sophie cried. “Father’s late, isn’t he? I’m sure we’ll be late! How long will it take to drive over to Warria?⁠—An hour? Goodness! And it’ll be almost time for the dance to begin then! Oh, don’t my shoes look nice, Maggie?”

She looked down at her feet in the white cotton stockings and white canvas shoes, with ankle straps, which Maggie Grant had sent into Budda for. The hem of her skirt came just to her ankles. She played the new shoes in and out from under it in little dancing steps, and the women laughed at her, happy in her happiness.

“But you haven’t got a fan, Sophie,” Mrs. Watty said.

“A fan?” Sophie’s eyes widened.

“You should oughter have a fan. In my young days it wasn’t considered decent to go to a ball without a fan,” Mrs. Watty remarked grimly.

“Oh!” Sophie looked from one to the other of her advisers.

Mrs. George Woods was just going to say that it was a long time since Mrs. Watty’s young days, when Mrs. Watty took the brown paper from the long, thin parcel she was carrying.

“I thought most likely you wouldn’t have one,” she said, “so I brought this over.”

She unfurled an old-fashioned, long-handled, sandalwood fan, with birds and flowers painted on the brown satin screen, and a little row of feathers along the top. Mrs. George Woods and Mrs. Grant exchanged glances that Mrs. Watty should pander to the vanity of an occasion.

“Mrs. Watty!” Sophie took the fan with a little cry of delight.

“My, aren’t you a grown-up young lady now, Sophie?” Mrs. Woods exclaimed, as Sophie unfurled the fan.

“But mind you take care of it, Sophie,” Mrs. Watty said, stiffening against the relaxing atmosphere of goodwill and excitement. “Watty got it for me last trip he made to sea, before we was married, and I set a good deal of store by it.”

“Oh, I’ll be ever so careful!” Sophie declared. She opened the fan. “Isn’t it pretty?”

Dropping into a chair, she murmured: “May I⁠—have this dance with you, Miss Rouminof?” And casting a shy upward glance over her fan, as if answering for herself, “I don’t mind if I do!”

Martha and Mrs. Woods laughed heartily, recognising Arthur Henty’s way of talking in the voice Sophie had imitated.

“That’s the way to do it, Sophie,” Mrs. Woods said; “only you shouldn’t say, ‘Don’t mind if I do,’ but, ‘It’s a pleasure, I’m sure.’ ”

“It’s a pleasure, I’m sure,” Sophie mimed.

“Is she going to wear the dress over?” Mrs. Watty asked anxiously.

“Yes,” Maggie Grant said. “Bessie’s lending her a dust-coat. I don’t think it’ll get crushed very much. You see, they won’t arrive until it’s nearly time for the dance to begin, and we thought it’d be better for us