"Guessed it. I'm Dinah Waycott. I expect my young man has told you about me. 'Orphan Dinah' they call me. I'm tokened to John Bamsey, the water-keeper, my foster-father's son."
He nodded.
"I've heard tell about you. John Bamsey often drops in at Falcon Farm."
He pulled the trap along and she walked beside him leading the pony. She spoke kind words to the creature, apologised to it and told it to cheer up.
Maynard had leisure to observe her and quickly perceived the nature of her mind and that outspeaking quality that had occasioned argument. Ac their present meeting it took the form of a sort of familiarity that impressed Lawrence as strange from a woman to a man she had never met before.
"I was wishful to see you, because Johnny likes you. But he's not much of a hand at sizing up people. Perhaps if he was, he wouldn't be so silly fond of me."
This was no challenge, but merely the utterance of her honest opinion. Nothing of the coquette appeared in Dinah. She had received his succour with gratitude, but expressed no dismay at the poor figure she cut on their meeting.
"He's a good chap," he said, "and terrible fond of you, miss."
Thus unconsciously he fell into her own direct way of speech. He did not feel that he was talking to a stranger; and that not because he had already heard so much about her, but because Dinah created an atmosphere of directness between herself and all men and women. She recognised no barriers until the other side raised them. There was a frank goodwill about her that never hid itself. She was like a wild thing that has not yet fallen in with man, or learned to distrust him.
"Are you a chap with a pretty good judgment of your fellow creatures?" she asked. "You've got a thoughtful sort of face as if you might be."