She blushed as one who knew the tone and the words, and was wont to understand beneath them the insinuation, “You’re a tramp.”
But she was mistaken. The woman before her prided herself on knowing a respectable female when she saw her, and though poor and miserable, the girl did not look “a bad ’un.”
“I’m a-goin’ on further,” said she evasively.
“Oh!” said the woman again. Then, as not wishing to be inquisitive, she added, “Well, thank ye. I wish ye a good evenin’. It’s cold weather; it’s best to walk fast to keep warm.”
And she nodded, moving on quickly to suit her action to her words.
“Good evenin’,” said the girl.
But she did not follow the advice.
Though she carried but the smallest of little bundles, she rested it on the brick parapet as the women had done with their heavier loads, and stood looking down the river into the afterglow.
It was four o’clock. The sun had set, and the poplars that crossed the stream and the fields, dividing meadow-land from water-cress grounds, shot straight arrows against a pale crimson sky, that was cool even in its fire in the cold, crisp air. Every little bare twig on the slender, bare boughs of the poplars pointed upwards; the willows by the river, though less spare and less commanding, modestly followed their example; the sky might have been constraining with its tender glory, but the girl—after one glance around on the clear-cut winter landscape, so calm with the patience of waiting Nature, but so cruelly silent with the dearth of stirring life—fastened her eyes on the water and on the water alone.
The long strings of half-dead, slimy weed that swayed idly to and fro, attached and yet floating, like the traveller’s joy on a summer’s day a-moving in the wind—or better, yes, much better still—like some dank, clinging cotton stuffs, held to the gravel bed by some heavy weight, yet erring softly, saturated with much water, on the bosom of the stream—these seemed to fascinate her beyond the power to tear away her gaze.