“Quite seasonable, quite,” said the landlady. “Thank you.”
The man lifted his glass straight to his lips, and emptied it. He put it down again on the zinc counter with a click.
“Let’s have another,” he said.
The woman drew the beer, and the man went away with his glass to the second table, near the fire. The woman, after a moment’s hesitation, took her seat again at the table with the card-players. She had noticed the man: a big fine fellow, well dressed, a stranger.
But he spoke with that Cornish-Yankee accent she accepted as the natural twang among the miners.
The stranger put his foot on the fender and looked into the fire. He was handsome, well coloured, with well-drawn Cornish eyebrows, and the usual dark, bright, mindless Cornish eyes. He seemed abstracted in thought. Then he watched the card-party.
The woman was buxom and healthy, with dark hair and small, quick brown eyes. She was bursting with life and vigour, the energy she threw into the game of cards excited all the men, they shouted, and laughed, and the woman held her breast, shrieking with laughter.
“Oh, my, it’ll be the death o’ me,” she panted. “Now, come on, Mr. Trevorrow, play fair. Play fair, I say, or I s’ll put the cards down.”
“Play fair! Why who’s played unfair?” ejaculated Mr. Trevorrow. “Do you mean t’accuse me, as I haven’t played fair, Mrs. Nankervis?”
“I do. I say it, and I mean it. Haven’t you got the queen of spades? Now, come on, no dodging round me. I know you’ve got that queen, as well as I know my name’s Alice.”