Bones of the River - Edgar Wallace [61]
She was pretty and slim and very capable. Bones thought she was the most wonderful woman in the world. She was certainly the most wonderful white woman in the territories, for there was no other.
Sanders and Hamilton were at breakfast with their guest when Bones arrived from his toilet. The girl looked up from her plate, surveying the bowing newcomer with a cool and harrowing scrutiny, beginning at his neck (which made Bones very unhappy, for this portion of his anatomy was the constant subject of libel on the part of Hamilton) and ending with his polished locks.
“Good morning, honourable miss,” said Bones uncomfortably. “Nothing wrong with my jolly old nut – nothing offensive to your jolly old artistic temperament, my young Academarian?”
“Academician,” corrected Hamilton. “Sit down and eat your breakfast, Bones, and shut up!”
“I was thinking how beautiful you looked,” said Muriel, and Bones beamed.
“Not really, dear old miss? I was always considered a pretty old baby – ‘where have you come from dear old baby out of the nowhere particular into here’ – you know the jolly old hymn, honourable young miss? ‘Who gave you those twiddly-twiddly eyes of blue, a jolly old angel poked them as I came through.’”
“Good God!” gasped Hamilton under his breath. Bones quoting poetry always had this effect upon him.
“I think you’re lovely, Mr Tibbetts,” said Muriel with truth, and Bones giggled.
“You’re a naughty old flatterer!” he gurgled. “At the same time, Ham, old officer, I’ve often been mistaken for Henry Ainley. It’s a fact, dear old thing. I’m not sure whether it’s Henry Ainley or jolly old Owen Nares, but one of those comedians, old thing.”
“You’re sure you don’t mean the performing seals?” asked Hamilton, and Bones closed his eyes in patient resignation.
“I’ll take your word, dear old miss,” he said. “I don’t profess to be beautiful, but I’d pass in a crowd–”
“With a kick,” suggested Hamilton.
“And if you want to paint me,” Bones went on, contemptuous of the interruption, “well, here I am!”
“And if you’d paint him an invisible blue, so that we couldn’t see him,” said Hamilton, “you’d be rendering the community and the Government a great service.”
“You’re very unkind,” said Muriel, crumbling her toast, her grey, insolent eyes on Bones. “Mr Tibbetts has the perfect Greek face.”
“There you are!” said Bones with a smirk.
“His nose is a little too short for the perfect Greek, perhaps, but his chin is rather a dream, don’t you think, Captain Hamilton?”
“Have you noticed his cheek?” asked Hamilton sardonically. “That’s a nightmare!”
“There’s a lot about Bones that is very picturesque – let it go at that,” interrupted Sanders with a smile. “He’s rather thin, and his habit of stooping is a little unsightly–”
“And his feet are enormous,” murmured Hamilton.
“Jealousy, dear old thing, jealousy,” said Bones testily. “Don’t paint me, dear young honourable miss! I should never hear the last of it.”
“Paint him as a curiosity,” suggested Hamilton, “and leave a light burning over the picture at night. It would keep the most hardened burglar at bay.”
Bones carried off the visitor to give her a few lessons in the art of composition. She had chosen the residency garden and that patch of high gum-trees by the water’s edge – a perfect retreat on a hot day.
“If you’ll sit over here, dear old miss, you’ll see the river and that dinky little village. Isn’t that fine?”
“It’s perfectly splendid,” said the girl. “Put my easel there, Mr Tibbetts, and will you unfasten my stool? And oh, do please go back and get my paints: I’ve forgotten them.”
A dishevelled Bones ran errands for a quarter of an hour, after which the artistic Muriel began to paint.
Stealing forward until he filled the gap between the trees, and, incidentally, in the very centre of her picture, Bones folded his arms, struck a Napoleonic attitude and waited. He waited for half an hour, and when she said: “Do you mind standing on one side,