He could not understand the appalled pallor that settled on her pinched high-featured face.
"Why n't ye git a better bizness?" she asked, with the plangent cadence of reproach.
He stared, again confronted with that sense of being at once uncomprehending and uncomprehended. "Do I speak the English langwitch, or not?" he said petulantly in his inner consciousness. For the situation fostered doubts.
The stress of the obvious misunderstanding placed a period to the carousal with the baby, and he handed the infant back to its mother as he took a tendered chair. The child had no mind to relinquish the gay company it had encountered, and clung to the showman, working both bare feet in the direction of its lackadaisical mother, with a very distinct intention of making her keep her distance, if kicks might suffice. Its strength did not match its resolution, however, and it was shortly consigned to its cradle, where it crawled up out of its coverings, whenever it was laid on its back, yelling vociferously and continuously, save when it paused once or twice to break into a laugh as Lloyd leaned over the back of his chair to snap his fingers at it.
"You have got a dandy place up here," he said by way of making his stay agreeable. "Fine orchard. Must have oodles of apples and peaches."
Again that doubt of the "English langwitch" assailed him. Surely he had said naught affrighting, but there was a look like terror in the old woman's eyes.
"Some o' the trees ain't good bearers," said the girl, speaking for the first time since their entrance. She had bestowed elsewhere her burden of grapes, and she was standing now on the broad hearthstone divested of those picturesque accessories to her costume. Lloyd was conscious of a curiosity concerning her beauty, thus devoid of embellishment, but as he turned to critically scan her appearance his attention was struck by a peculiarity that diverted his survey. She had just been out in the rain—yet how they had both run to reach the shelter before the bursting of the storm! She was evidently wet to the skin, and as she stood on the hot flagstones the water ran off her hair, her hands, her skirts in rills, and the heat of the fire sent the steam ascending from every drenched fold of her garments. Her errand had obviously been a matter of some importance toward which she had had little inclination, for she did not relish her dripping condition, as was manifested in the fact that she was immediately taking down a fresh gown from where it had hung on a nail on the back of a door, and rummaging in a chest for other dry gear. She did not leave the room, however, till a heavy step smote the puncheons of the porch, when she gathered up the fresh garments and climbing a ladder-like stairway to a room in the roof, disappeared in the attic.
She had gone to summon the master of the house on his account, Lloyd realised at length, and with a sentiment of expectant anxiety he turned toward the newcomer, although for his life he could not understand what should require the girl to face a tempest like this to bring the owner to reckon with a chance wayfarer, seeking shelter from a storm. The owner, nay, two, five, a half dozen stalwart men, heavily built, tall, bearded, clad in brown jeans, trooped in, their united tramp shaking the puncheons of the floor like the march of a detachment of infantry. They, too, dripped with the rain, but with more unconcern than the girl had manifested, for they ensconced themselves in chairs, two or three joining the group around the hearthstone, where winter and summer the mountaineer's fire is always aglow, its intensity governed by the temperature; the others leaned back against the wall, their splint-bottomed chairs tilted on the hind legs, all solemnly silent, all monotonously chewing their quids of tobacco, all stolidly eyeing the guest.
Only the eldest seemed to anticipate conversation. Not that he spoke himself, but he fixed his eyes so interrogatively, so coercively on Lloyd's face that the expression betokened a hundred eager questions. An account of himself was evidently in order—but why? Lloyd glanced out of the open door at the glittering, steely, serried ranks of the rainfall, thinking that as soon as they had marched past and down the valley he too would speedily evacuate the premises and see his queer entertainers never again—unless indeed they were minded to patronise the attractions of the great Lloyd & Haxon Street Fair now ready to exhibit in Colbury. The association of ideas allayed a sudden rush of anger which was rising in his consciousness, responsive to the uncertainty of his position, the peculiarity of their manner, the impossibility to compass an accord of comprehension in these simplicities of circumstance. It was stemmed in an instant by the instinct of the showman. Since he was expected by his uncouth host to inaugurate the conversation he would in the interest of the show waive ceremony and essay whatever topic came first to his tongue.
"Sudden storm, sir," he said. "I was out there admiring your fine orchards and it overtook me."