Next evening Joe called at the cottage, to fetch Ernie for the class. He arrived as he sometimes had done of late, a little before Ernie was due home from the yard. At this hour the little ones had already been put to bed; and Ruth would be alone with Alice, between whom and the engineer there had sprung up a singular intimacy ever since the evening on which he had carried her home like a dead thing in his arms from Saffrons Croft.
Ruth had not seen him since his clash with Alfred in the door; and he had obviously avoided her.
Now she thrilled faintly. Was he in love with her?—she was not sure.
He entered without speaking and took his seat as always before the fire, broad-spread and slightly huddled in his overcoat, chin on chest, staring into the fire.
Ruth, busy baking, her arms up to the elbow in dough, made her decision swiftly. She would meet him, face him, fight him.
"Well, Joe," she said, not looking at him.
It was the first time she had called him that.
He peeped up at her, only his eyes moving, small, black-brown, and burning like a bear's.
"That's better," he muttered.
She flashed up at him. Innocence and cunning, the schoolboy and the brute, Pan and Silenus fought, leered, and frolicked in his face.