"How? When? What does he do? Where is he?" I waved the primroses.
"I don't know any of the things you ask me, and I don't know him. Honour bright. But I think I've heard of him, though of course the Mr. Traies I've heard of is quite likely a different person altogether, for the name is not so rare in Devonshire."
"Is the one you've heard of a wicked man?"
"Not a very good man, perhaps."
"Oh, it's the same! Say wicked, it's what you mean. A vile wicked man. He cruelly treated my mother and put her in this grave. There, I was forgetting her. Mother dear, here are the primroses."
I knelt down and said a prayer, half aloud, more to my mother than to her Maker and mine. Only for a moment, and then very slightly, was I shy of the Stranger. Nor was there anything self-conscious and melodramatic in me, no enjoyment in performing a striking and sentimental act in front of another person, such as would have been experienced by most people, and by myself too a few years later. (I had less sense of pose and acting when some one else was watching me than if alone, for I myself was the only person I performed in front of. On the day when I hurled "Brawling woman in a wide house" at Aunt Jael, it was somebody else inside me looking on and listening who exulted in Mary's wit. Not for some years yet did I begin in the more usual manner to make life a performance before other people.) I was silent for perhaps three minutes. As I rose I wiped my eyes. So I think did the Stranger.
He said: "Would you mind if I put some flowers there too—wipe your knees, the grass is damp—Would you mind?"
"Why? No, it would be very kind. But you haven't got any."
"Some other time I shall bring them, when next I'm passing through Tawborough."
"Why?"