“Well, that’s all right. You don’t mind my walking with you a bit?”
“No!”
“I only came here last night, and I’m putting up at the Charleston,” said Silas. “Of course there are a lot of friends I could stay with but I always prefer being free; one is never quite free in another person’s house; for one thing you can’t order the servants about, though, upon my word, now-a-days one can’t do that, much, anywhere.”
“I suppose not,” said Phyl.
The fact was being borne in upon her that Silas in town was a different person from Silas in the country, or seemed so; more sedate and more conventional. She also noticed as they walked along that he was saluted by a great many people, and also, before she had done with him that morning, she noticed that the leery, impudent looking, coloured folk seemed to come under a blight as they passed him, giving him the wall and yards to spare. It was as though the impersonification of the blacksnake whip were walking with her as well as a most notoriously dangerous man, a man who would strike another down, white or coloured, for a glance, not to say a word.
She had come out on business, commissioned by Miss Pinckney to purchase a ball of magenta Berlin wool. Miss Pinckney still knitted antimacassars, and the construction of antimacassars is impossible without Berlin wool—that obsolete form of German Frightfulness.
She bestowed the things on poor folk to brighten their homes.
When Phyl went into the store to buy the wool Silas waited outside, and when she came out they walked down the street together.
She had intended returning straight home after making her purchase but they were walking now not towards Vernons but towards the Battery.
“What do you do with yourself all day?” asked Silas, suddenly breaking silence.