"As you please. I shall be here every day, ready and only too glad to see you."
"An'—an' you ban't cross wi' me for speakin' so rude, Mister Jan?"
"Cross, Joan? No, I'm never cross with anybody but myself. I couldn't be cross with my kind little friend if I tried to be."
He shook hands; it was the first occasion that he had done so, and she blushed. His hand was cold and thin, and she heard one of the bones in it give a little crack as he held her palm within his own for the briefest space of time. Then, as usual, the moment after he had said "good-by," he appeared to become absolutely unconscious of her presence, and returned to his picture.
Joan's mind dwelt much upon the artist after she had departed, and every train of reflection came back to the last words Barron spoke that morning. He had called her his kind little friend. It was very wonderful, Joan thought, and a statement not to be explained at all. Her stepmother's voice cut these pleasant memories sharply, and she returned home to find that Uncle Chirgwin had already arrived—a fact his old gray horse, tethered in the orchard, and his two-wheeled market cart, drawn up in the side-lane, testified to before Mrs. Tregenza announced it.
"Out again, of coorse, just because you knawed I was to be drove off my blessed legs to-day. I'll tell your faither of 'e, so I will. Gals like you did ought to be chained 'longside theer work till 'tis done."
Uncle Chirgwin sat by the fireside with a placid if bored expression on his round face. His hands were folded on his stomach; his short legs were stuck out before him; his head was quite bald, his color high, his gray eyes weak, though they had some laughter hidden in them. His double chin was shaved, but a very white bristle of stubbly whisker surrounded it and ascended to where all that remained of his hair stuck, like two patches of cotton wool, above his ears. The old man wore a suit of gray tweed and blinked benignly through a pair of spectacles. He had already heard enough of Mrs. Tregenza's troubles to last some time, and turned with pleasure to Joan as she entered. So hearty indeed was the greeting and a kiss which accompanied it that his niece felt the displeasure which her uncle had recorded by post upon the occasion of her engagement to Mary Chirgwin's former sweetheart existed no more.
"My ivers! a braave, bowerly maid you'm grawin', sure 'nough! Joan'll be a wummon 'fore us can look round, mother."
"Iss—an' a fine an' lazy wummon tu. I wish you could make her work like what Mary does up Drift."
"Well, I dunnaw. You see there's all sorts of girls, same as plants an' 'osses an' cetera. Some's for work, some's for shaw. You 'specks a flower to be purty, but you doan't blame a 'tater plant 'cause 'e ed'n particular butivul. Same wi' 'osses, an' wi' gals. Joan's like that chinee plate 'pon the bracket, wi' the pickshers o' Saltash Burdge 'pon en, an' gold writin' under; an' Mary's like that pie-dish, what you put in the ubben a while back. Wan's for shaw, t'other's for use—eh?"