Perhaps the girl saw, while she did not comprehend it. She regarded him helplessly.
“I—I don’t know—hardly—why I came,” she faltered, twisting the corner of her shawl.
She had been rather pretty, but the colour and freshness were gone from her face and there were premature lines of pain and misery marking it here and there.
“Sit down,” he said. “Have you walked all the way from Janway’s Mills?”
She started a little and gave him a look, half wonder, half relief, and then fell to twisting the fringe of her poor shawl again.
“Yes, I walked,” she answered; “but I can’t set down. I h’ain’t but a minute to stay.”
Her clothes, which had been shabby at their best, were at their worst now, and, altogether, she was a figure neither attractive nor picturesque.
But Baird saw pathos in her. It was said that one of his most charming qualities was his readiness to discover the pathetic under any guise.
“You came to ask Mr. Latimer some questions, perhaps?” he said.