She pointed to the great wooden settle, but he remained standing until she returned with a plate of bread and meat and a jug of beer. Going towards her as she was crossing the kitchen, and moving swiftly and gracefully on his bare feet, as some lithe creature of the woods, he took her burden from her, and, placing it on the table, sat down, and fell to with right good will.
Molly went on with her work, eyeing her visitor from time to time. Once, happening to intercept her glance, he smiled at her brightly.
“I’m sure I don’t know whatever my father will say,” muttered Molly. “He’ll haply be angry with me for letting you stop.”
“Is he a hard man?” enquired Jean, his face falling.
“Nay, when father’s not crossed there’s no kinder man in the whole o’ Lancashire. But if you go the wrong way to work wi’ him! Poor Teddy, my brother, did that, and my father turned him out. He’s sorry enough about it now, poor father is, for Ted went and ’listed and hasn’t never been home since.”
The stranger laid down his knife and fork and looked at her earnestly. “If your brother were taken prisoner,” he said, “would not he, your father, be glad if he were treated kindly? If he had a chance of coming home, and only wanted just what I want now, shelter for a few days to help him, what would your father say if one refused him?”
“There’s something in that,” said Molly, and the glance which she threw at the young stranger was much softer and more encouraging than her words.
An hour or two wore away, and Molly finished tidying, and spread the long tables, and fed the chickens, and set her dairy to rights. In all these operations Jean Marie Kerenec assisted her, and he told her the most wonderful things the while, so that now her eyes brightened with astonishment, and now her bonny cheek grew pale with alarm, and sometimes her red lips would droop and tears of compassion would hang upon her lashes. But she thought her new friend an heroic and most delightful personage.
When the shadows had crept over the face of the land and the first bat circled round the house, the tramp of clogged feet, and the sound of many voices, announced the return of the harvesters.
“You’d best hide,” said Molly, struck with a sudden thought. “Yes, hide in the buttery till the folks are abed and my father is having his glass comfortable by the fire; then I’ll tackle him.”