“Had No. 9 a letter?” asks the little Sister.
She sits plump and placid in her cloak, and looks like a dove puffing out her feathers in the sunshine. We have said she has a cooing voice.
“Yes, he had,” says the Canadian, and digs a vindictive finger into the dry grass.
The Signora, fearing the conversation is going to lapse, plunges into the breach.
“What was your work at home? Farming, I suppose.”
This remark meets with an unexpected success. The poor, fierce eyes—that seem never to have ceased from contemplation of unpardonable injury since that day at Ypres when the fumes of hell belched up before them—brighten.
“Wa-al! I do sometimes this and sometimes that. I can do most things. It’s just what I happen to want to put my hand to. I’m master of half a dozen trades, I am. I’ve been on the farm, and I’m a blacksmith, and an engineer on the railway; and a barber, and a butcher.”
“Dear me!” says the little Sister.
Her gaze is serenely fixed on the smiling green path. From the shadow in which we sit, it leads to a slope out into the blaze of the sunshine, where a cypress-tree rises like an immense green flame, circled with a shimmer of light. But perhaps her tone conveys rebuke, for our Canadian suddenly relapses into silence, from which we cannot again entice him.