Miss Ducharme nodded coldly.
“Cream ’n’ sugar?” asked the widow.
“Some cream, a good deal of sugar, and a little coffee,” said Jim, stealing a look at the young woman. She was stirring her coffee, a process which appeared to require concentration. Jim didn’t blame her for stirring it or for doing anything else which would bring to public attention a hand as graceful and shapely as hers. Her face, beneath a stack of blackest hair, was expressionless.
“Mr. Ashe hain’t goin’ to bite you, Marie,” said the widow, with a note of exasperation in her voice. Jim was glad he had not taken a swallow of coffee, for he could not have been responsible for consequences.
Miss Ducharme raised her eyes slowly, looked for an instant into Jim’s eyes. “Nobody’s going to bite me if I can help it,” she said.
“Mrs. Stickney is right,” said Jim, “I’m not vicious. I almost never bite strangers. Still, I might wear a muzzle if it would help matters.”
Miss Ducharme made no reply save a faint movement of her shoulders—inherited from an ancestor who had served Frontenac. She finished her coffee and toast and egg slowly, arose silently, and left the room. The widow looked after her a moment with compressed lips.
“Sometimes,” she said, “she’s that cantankerous my hand fairly itches to come against her ear. Seems she might ’a’ acted a leetle prettier, bein’s you’re a stranger and this is your first meal.”
“Don’t let it worry you, Mrs. Stickney.”
“Worry me! Huh! ’Tain’t worry that ails me, it’s bein’ that provoked with her. She’s lived with me since her folks died. She was fifteen then. I couldn’t make her out as a child and a Philadelphy lawyer couldn’t make her out as a woman. She’s been gittin’ worse. Marie’s a good girl, Mr. Ashe—better ’n a lot of these mealy-mouthed, bowin’-and-scrapin’ ones—and Lord knows she’s smarter. Too dum smart, I call her, for her own good. But she’s queer. Kind of knurly. She don’t appear to like folks, somehow.”