Ursula had apprehended him with a fine frisson of attraction. The full-built woman was staring offensively. Again Ursula forgot him.
“Won’t you have the chair?” she said.
The man looked at her with a sideways look of appreciation, yet far-off, almost insolent. The woman drew herself up. There was a certain costermonger richness about her. She did not know what Ursula was after, she was on her guard, hostile. Birkin approached, smiling wickedly at seeing Ursula so nonplussed and frightened.
“What’s the matter?” he said, smiling. His eyelids had dropped slightly, there was about him the same suggestive, mocking secrecy that was in the bearing of the two city creatures. The man jerked his head a little on one side, indicating Ursula, and said, with curious amiable, jeering warmth:
“What she warnt?—eh?” An odd smile writhed his lips.
Birkin looked at him from under his slack, ironical eyelids.
“To give you a chair—that—with the label on it,” he said, pointing.
The man looked at the object indicated. There was a curious hostility in male, outlawed understanding between the two men.
“What’s she warnt to give it us for, guvnor,” he replied, in a tone of free intimacy that insulted Ursula.
“Thought you’d like it—it’s a pretty chair. We bought it and don’t want it. No need for you to have it, don’t be frightened,” said Birkin, with a wry smile.