“Nay, then, it just waint!” she rapped out. “I told Bob he needn’t hurry himself, getting off. They won’t be looking for you yet. Marsh-folk is always a week behind everybody else.”
“I’ll be glad to be off,” Kit said dully, with the mechanical patience he had learned at her hands. “I’m getting weary a bit, hanging about. I’d best be off.”
“Ay, well,” she jibed at him, “you’ll have to bide. I don’t know as another hour or two in my house’ll do you any harm. You were glad enough on it once, when landlord skifted you out. And it’s as cheap sitting as standing, I reckon, even for folks as hasn’t the price of a seat. You’d best set down till it’s time for you to stir.”
“Trap’ll be round,” Kit repeated doggedly. “I’d reyther stand.” He drew in his fingers as if her eyes hurt them, and did his best to straighten his back and set his jaw. The deliverance that was so near gave him courage to fight, in spite of the sinister things in her face and voice. He had yielded in almost every contest yet, and if she had lost where the fiddle was concerned, it was because she had been conquered by something in herself. To sit was to own himself beaten to the end, and would send him shamed to the marsh from a last defeat. And there was always the chance that if he sat he might never get away, because of the shrinking that wrought against him in his heart.
So again he braced himself and said, “I’ll stand.”
She bent forward towards him from the stair, her chin thrust out at him and her eyes nearly shut. He wanted to push her away and hurry out into the street. He had a feeling that she had trodden that winged thing underfoot, so that there was no longer a refuge for him upstairs.
“I tellt you trap wouldn’t be round just yet.”
“Ay, but it will.”
“Likely you think I don’t know?”
“Nay, not I.” Kit looked away.