“He’s making a mistake. He’s making a mistake to come out here, tell him from me. They’ll take him at their own level, not at his.”
“But perhaps he wants to be taken at their level,” said Harriet, rather bitterly, almost loving the short, thick man opposite for his quiet, Cornish voice and his uncanny grey eyes, and his warning.
“If he does he makes the mistake of his life, tell him from me.” And William James rose to his feet. “You’ll excuse me for stopping talking like this, over things that’s no business of mine,” he added.
“It’s awfully good of you,” said Harriet.
“Well, it’s not often I interfere with people’s doings. But there was just something about you and Mr Somers—”
“Awfully good of you.”
He had taken his little black felt hat. He had an almost Italian or Spanish look about him—from one of the big towns, Barcelona or even Palermo.
“I suppose I’ll have to be getting along,” he said.
She held out her hand to him to bid him good-bye. But he shook hands in a loose, slack way, and was gone, leaving Harriet uneasy as if she had received warning of a hidden danger.
She hastened to show Somers the persimmons when he came home, and to tell of her visitor.