The farmer himself did not pay any attention to either of the girls, so that Jenny was compelled to gain her impression of him as if he were an animal in a cage, funny or dull or interesting, but always remote. She was content to watch him eat with a detached curiosity that prevented her from being irritated by his deliberation, or, after noisy drinking, by the colossal fist that smudged his lips dry.
"Ess," Trewhella announced after swallowing a large mouthful of plum-cake. "Ess, I shall be brim glad when I'm back to Trewinnard. ’Tis my belief the devil's the only one to show a Cornishman round London fittee."
Mr. Corin laughed at this sardonic witticism, but said he was going to have a jolly good try at showing Zack the sights of the town that very night.
"You ought to take him to the Orient," May advised.
"By gosh, and that's a proper notion," said Corin, slapping his thigh. "That's you and me to-night, Zack."
"What's the Orient?" inquired Trewhella.
"Haven't you never heard of the Orient?" Jenny gasped, her sense of fitness disturbed by such an abyss of ignorance.
"No, my dear, I never have," replied Trewhella, and for the first time looked Jenny full in the face.
"I dance there," she told him, "in the ballet."
The Cornishman looked round to his friend for an explanation.