"You should have knocked. The house is my home, if it is empty."
His face changed instantly to its usual hard sullen aspect, and he said briefly:
"I did knock."
"The landlady has told her all about us," he thought, "and she rejects sympathy and fellowship from such as we are."
But Edith's feeling had only been annoyance that a stranger had seen her emotion, so she said quickly, "I beg your pardon. We have had trouble, but I don't give way in this manner often. Have you brought a load?"
"Yes. If your servant will help me I will bring the things in."
As he and Hannibal carried in heavy rolls of carpet and other articles, Edith removed as far as possible the traces of her grief, and soon began to scan by the light of day with some curiosity her acquaintance of the previous evening. He was the very opposite to herself in appearance. Her eyes were large and dark. He had a rather small but piercing blue eye. His locks were light and curly, and his beard sandy. Her hair was brown and straight. He was fully six feet tall, while she was only of medium height. And yet Edith was not a brunette, but possessed a complexion of transparent delicacy which gave her the fragile appearance characteristic of so many American girls. His face was much tamed by exposure to March winds, but his brow was as white as hers. In his morbid tendency to shun every one, he usually kept his eyes fixed on the ground so as to appear not to see people, and this, with his habitual frown, gave a rather heavy and repelling expression to his face.
"He would make a very good representative of the laboring classes," she thought, "if he hadn't so disagreeable an expression."
It had only dimly dawned upon poor Edith as yet that she now belonged to the "laboring classes."
But her energetic nature soon reacted against idle grieving, and her pale cheeks grew rosy, and her face full of eager life as she assisted and directed.