Her eye considered her host in a way that caused Patsy a curious internal shyness, not altogether unpleasant.
"A pity," said she. "It would be a nice little place for a woman and a child."
Then she straightened herself and stood up. She had made a very good meal.
"I saw where the basin was in the scullery," she said. "Don't you trouble. It's a woman's work, not a man's. You stay here and talk to Georgie."
He carried in the tray when she had piled it with cups and saucers. Otherwise he obeyed her. Better if that ruffian came back he should find him talking to Georgie rather than helping the woman to wash up.
But Georgie was very uncommunicative. He seemed too tired to talk. He too had not done so badly with the meal once he had begun. After a while his head fell a little to one side and he slept.
Patsy sat where he was. He could hear the noise of water flowing inside the house and the chink of cups and saucers in process of washing up. Not for worlds would he have entered the house. He was thinking strange thoughts. For the first time he was touched by a woman, this poor, ill-clad, tramping woman, the wife of an evident scoundrel, touched to the heart for her and her child. The happy, pretty girls who had looked shy invitation at him had not appealed. They had, one by one, put him down as a dry old bachelor and taken their charms elsewhere. Patsy had never missed wife or child. He would have said himself that he had enough to think of, with her Ladyship and the Master and Mr. Terry, enough to fill his heart.
Not that he felt anything beyond an immense compassion for these poor victims of man's cruelty. Perhaps with such a person as Patsy Kenny compassion would serve for love always. "The creatures!" he said to himself, "the creatures! Sure it isn't the hard ways of the world they're fit for at all."
The woman emerged from the cottage, moving with a gentle softness. There was nothing of the tramp about her beyond the broken boots, the hat which had obviously been under the weather, the poor clothes. She sat down beside Patsy Kenny and spoke in a low voice for fear of waking the sleeping child.
"It is a hard road he has to travel for one so young," she said, and he noticed that she looked quickly towards the gate.