She drew a step closer. Then she saw that he was laughing, and drew a step back.
“Get up, and don’t be fooling,” said she.
“Fooling! And who started it?” asked he.
Jude made no reply. She turned and went off to the cache, lugged the sacks a bit more away from the opening, and started to put the poles across. When he joined her on the work she wouldn’t speak. She was evidently mortally offended.
He knew at once and by some fine instinct what was the matter with her. He had trod on her dignity, like the Thelusson woman,—treated her like a child, that is to say like a girl, for the two things were synonymous with Jude, who seemed to have no more idea of the realities of sex than a pumpkin.
When she did speak at last, it was to give jeering orders.
“Lord! Did you never have to use your hands? Which way is that to be sticking the poles? Why, it’d take twenty dozen to cover it the way you’re doing! Leave a foot and a half between them.”
“Right,” said Ratcliffe humbly.
“I didn’t say two foot.”
“Sorry.”