“You can dish up, Huia,” said Barbara. She brushed the locks of damp hair from her eyes with the back of her forearm. “I’m afraid I seem to have used a lot of dishes. There’ll be six in the dining-room. Mr. Questing’s out for lunch.”

“Good job,” said Huia skittishly. Barbara pretended not to hear. Huia, moving with the half-languid, half-vigorous grace of the young Maori, smiled brilliantly, and began to pile stacks of plates on a tray. “He’s no good,” she said softly.

Barbara glanced at her. Huia laughed richly, lifting her short upper lip. “I shall never understand them,” Barbara thought. Aloud she said: “Mightn’t it be better if you just pretended not to hear when Mr. Questing starts those — starts being — starts teasing you?”

“He makes me very angry,” said Huia, and suddenly she became childishly angry, flashing her eyes and stamping her foot. “Silly ass,” she said.

“But you’re not really angry.”

Huia looked out of the corners of her eyes at Barbara, pulled an equivocal grimace, and tittered.

“Don’t forget your cap and apron,” said Barbara, and left the sweltering kitchen for the dining-room.

Wai-ata-tapu Hostel was a one-storied wooden building shaped like an E with the middle stroke missing. The dining-room occupied the centre of the long section separating the kitchen and serveries from the boarders’ bedrooms, which extended into the east wing. The west wing, private to the Claires, was a series of cramped cabins and a tiny sitting-room. The house had been designed by Colonel Claire on army-hut lines with an additional flavour of sanatorium. There were no passages, and all the rooms opened on a partially covered-in verandah. The inside walls were of yellowish-red oiled wood. The house smelt faintly of linseed oil and positively of sulphur. An observant visitor might have traced in it the history of the Claires’ venture. The framed London Board-of-Trade posters, the chairs and tables painted, not very capably, in primary colours, the notices in careful script, the archly reproachful rhyme-sheets in bathrooms and lavatories, all spoke of high beginnings.