He gave a sidelong glance at Brydon, and saw a troubled look.
"Yes," Brydon said, "he is different; and so is she."
"She is a lady," Pierre said, with slow emphasis. "She couldn't hide it if she tried. She plays the piano, and looks all silk in calico. Made for this?"—he waved his hand towards the Bridge House. "No, no! made for—"
He paused, smiled enigmatically, and dropped a bit of wood on the swift current.
Brydon frowned, then said: "Well, made for what, Pierre?"
Pierre looked over Brydon's shoulder, towards a pretty cottage on the hillside. "Made for homes like that, not this," he said, and he nodded first towards the hillside, then to the Bridge House. (The cottage belonged to the young doctor.) A growl like an animal's came from Brydon, and he clinched the other's shoulder. Pierre glanced at the hand, then at Brydon's face, and said sharply: "Take it away."
The hand dropped; but Brydon's face was hot, and his eyes were hard.
Pierre continued: "But then women are strange. What you expect they will not—no. Riches?—it is nothing; houses like that on the hill, nothing. They have whims. The hut is as good as the house, with the kitchen in the open where the river welts and washes, and a man—the great man of the world to them—to play the little game of life with. . . . Pshaw! you are idle: move; you are thick in the head: think hard; you like the girl: speak."
As he said this, there showed beneath them the front timbers of a small crib of logs with a crew of two men, making for the rapids and the slide below. Here was an adventure, for running the rapids with so slight a craft and small a crew was smart work. Pierre, measuring the distance, and with a "Look out, below!" swiftly let himself down by his arms as far as he could, and then dropped to the timbers, as lightly as if it were a matter of two feet instead of twelve. He waved a hand to Brydon, and the crib shot on. Brydon sat eyeing it abstractedly till it ran into the teeth of the rapids, the long oars of the three men rising and falling to the monotonous cry. The sun set out the men and the craft against the tall dark walls of the river in strong relief, and Brydon was carried away from what Pierre had been saying. He had a solid pleasure in watching, and he sat up with a call of delight when he saw the crib drive at the slide. Just glancing the edge, she shot through safely. His face blazed.
"A pretty sight!" said a voice behind him.