'The sulkiest bitch that ever trod!' muttered her brother.
But she finished her task with perfectly impassive face, the young doctor
watching her interestedly all the while. Then she went out.
Fred Henry stared after her, clenching his lips, his blue eyes fixing in
sharp antagonism, as he made a grimace of sour exasperation.
'You could bray her into bits, and that's all you'd get out of her,' he
said, in a small, narrowed tone.
The doctor smiled faintly.
'What's she _going_ to do, then?' he asked.
'Strike me if I know!' returned the other.
There was a pause. Then the doctor stirred.
'I'll be seeing you tonight, shall I?' he said to his friend.
'Ay--where's it to be? Are we going over to Jessdale?'
'I don't know. I've got such a cold on me. I'll come round to the Moon
and Stars, anyway.'
'Let Lizzie and May miss their night for once, eh?'
'That's it--if I feel as I do now.'
'All's one--'
The two young men went through the passage and down to the back door
together. The house was large, but it was servantless now, and desolate.
At the back was a small bricked house-yard, and beyond that a big square,
gravelled fine and red, and having stables on two sides. Sloping, dank,
winter-dark fields stretched away on the open sides.
But the stables were empty. Joseph Pervin, the father of the family, had
been a man of no education, who had become a fairly large horse dealer.
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