The Foot of Time: A Novel of Australia and the South Seas: (1933)

78 THE FOOT OF TIME
Bruce looked curiously at Florence Tooth. "The
old girl's going off the deep end again," he thought
to himself. "It's odd how she changes when she
gets excited."
"I think I can tell you something good—some-
thing very good that came of it," he put in.
Florence darted a look at him, suspicious. The
boy was likely to prove one too many for her, trying
to trip her up.
"Oh, dear me, no; you can't," she contradicted,
shaking her finger at him. "I'm not saying that
my sister is unhappy, poor long-suffering fool.
She'd tolerate anything. She'd be happy living in
a den with a panther. No good came of her marry-
ing that—that ))
"You are forgetting Miss Edith, I think."
Florence Tooth sat bolt upright in her chair—if
any improvement in the erect posture she invariably
affected were possible. Then she clapped her
hands. "Boy," she said, "I begin to like you. Yes,
I really begin to like him, Edith." And then to the
boy's surprise she jumped out of her chair, took
his loved one into her old arms, and fairly hugged
her.
"Oh, my darling," she cried, "don't take any
notice of your cranky old aunt who loves you.
You lovely girl! The boy's right, but for your
bumptious old Dad I wouldn't have you. Oh, my
darling, my darling!"
Edith took it all as it came, but the boy noticed
that she was not unresponsive to her eccentric old
relative's genuine love for her, which she shared.
"You are a funny old darling, Auntie," the girl
THE FOOT OF TIME 79
told her. "I can't help rather loving you. But you
really are an old duffer now, aren't you?"
Florence Tooth's excitability ended in a mood of
emotionalism. Nothing would satisfy her but that
she must bestow a kiss upon a bewildered Bruce,
after which, having worked off various phases of
her moods, she calmed down and disclosed to the
couple a side to her complex character which made
it easy for Bruce to understand Edith's fondness for
the old lady.
The meal continued, conversation went on
smoothly and easily, and might have continued till
it was time for Bruce to take his departure had
not another disturbing element intruded itself. It
came in the form of some boisterous shouting down
below them on the beach at Fairy Bower. Florence
rushed to her telescope, slurred it round to the
offending noise, focussed it upon the holiday-makers,
and demanded to be told what cause or just
impediment there might be against her obtaining
permission to erect a machine-gun alongside her
telescope.
Bruce was persuaded nothing pleased her better
than to have excuse to rush to the sighting
instrument, and to see through its exaggerating
eye justification for tirades against her
fellow man. Yet in all Manly no bureau
gave forth its cheque-book so speedily or so
generously as did that of Florence Tooth when
trouble in the homes of the poor warranted it. It
was said of her that she barked worse than she bit,
to which the better-informed added, "always supposing
that she possesses a bite at all."