She was a big woman,
but her eyes were small and tense. She drew near the stranger. She wore a
rather loud-patterned flannelette blouse, and a dark skirt.
'What will you have to drink with your supper?' she asked, and there was
a new, dangerous note in her voice.
He moved uneasily.
'Oh, I'll go on with ale.'
She drew him another glass. Then she sat down on the bench at the table
with him and the soldiers, and fixed him with her attention.
'You've come from St Just, have you?' she said.
He looked at her with those clear, dark, inscrutable Cornish eyes, and
answered at length:
'No, from Penzance.'
'Penzance!--but you're not thinking of going back there tonight?'
'No--no.'
He still looked at her with those wide, clear eyes that seemed like very
bright agate. Her anger began to rise. It was seen on her brow. Yet her
voice was still suave and deprecating.
'I _thought_ not--but you're not living in these parts, are you?'
'No--no, I'm not living here.' He was always slow in answering, as if
something intervened between him and any outside question.
'Oh, I see,' she said. 'You've got relations down here.'
Again he looked straight into her eyes, as if looking her into silence.
'Yes,' he said.
He did not say any more. She rose with a flounce. The anger was tight on
her brow. There was no more laughing and card-playing that evening,
though she kept up her motherly, suave, good-humoured way with the men.
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