THE WAVES
damp now, now dry. He leaves me in the lurch; he
follows Susan; and if Susan cries he will take my knife
and tell her stories. The big blade is an emperor; the
broken blade a Negro. I hate dangling things; I hate
dampish things. I hate wandering and mixing things
together. Now the bell rings and we shall be late.
Now we must drop our toys. Now we must go in
together. The copy-books are laid out side by side on the
green baize table.”
“1 will not conjugate the verb,” said Louis, ‘ until
Bernard has said it. My father is a banker in Brisbane and
I speak with an Australian accent. I will wait and copy
Bernard. He is English. They are all English. Susan’s
father is a clergyman. Rhoda has no father. Bernard and
Neville are the sons of gentlemen. Jinny lives with her
grandmother in London. Now they suck their pens. Now
they twist their copy-books, and, looking sideways at Miss
Hudson, count the purple buttons on her bodice. Bernard
has a chip in his hair. Susan has a red look in her eyes.
Both ate flushed. But Iam pale; Iam neat, and my knicker-
bockers are drawn together by a belt with a brass snake.
I know the lesson by heart. I know more than they will
ever know. I know my cases and my genders; I could
know everything in the world if I wished. But I do not
wish to come to the top and say my lesson. My roots are
threaded, like fibres in a flower-pot, round and round about
the world. I do not wish to come to the top and live in
the light of this great clock, yellow-faced, which ticks and
ticks. Jinny and Susan, Bernard and Neville bind them-
selves into a thong with which to lash me. They laugh at
my neatness, at my Australian accent. I will pow try to
imitate Bernard softly lisping Latin.”
“ Those are white words,” said Susan, “like stones one
picks up by the seashore.”
“ They flick their tails right and left as I speak them,”
said Bernard. “ They wag their tails ; they flick their tails ;
they move through the air in flocks, now this way, now that
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