SOOSIE 143 



she well understood where she had been born and the 

 manner of her salvation from imminent death. 



Though no special training had been hers, none of the 

 domestic arts were unknown to her. She acquired them 

 with ease and practised them with the air of a dignified 

 princess and neat-handed facility. While the other 

 children of the house stewed over lessons and rebelled 

 against essential tasks, to Soosie everything seemed to 

 make for holiday. She read voraciously, so that her 

 application of English became so keen that she was the 

 first to detect verbal dissonances. She, the youngest 

 of two girls and a boy, would often correct their speech, 

 not as a budding pedant, but because her ears were 

 delicately attuned to the music of the tongue and could 

 not, without offence, hearken to discords. She was an 

 affected prude. Her self-chosen style of dress, her pose, 

 her disdainful airs, her repugnance to coarse work, her 

 inclination towards occupations and pastimes which 

 involved isolation, showed that self-consciousness ruled 

 her life. She lived within herself, and her life was 

 gentle, contrasting with the boisterous playfulness of 

 her foster sisters and brother, upon whose romps she 

 smiled indulgently, but in which she never took part. 

 In her own estimation she was a girl quite out of the 

 ordinary, and one to whom the most honoured of guests 

 must be polite, if not deferential. She exacted little 

 niceties of demeanour from all, her equals and inferiors, 

 for was she not treated as a daughter of the house ? Often, 

 however, in her preoccupied moods would she assume 

 an air of detachment and jealousy towards the other 

 children, for she could not but contrast herself with 

 them. They were white; she was pronouncedly of the 

 despised race. How wistfully would she scan the face 

 of strangers ! How teeming with resentment against 

 fate her inevitable conclusions I In all save features 



