Then taking advantage of a momentary lull in the storm I shook the crazy casement and shouted:
“Let me in; I shall be wet to the skin!”
At length she rose hurriedly to her feet; then, shading her eyes with her hand, made her way towards me.
“Eh, dear!” she cried, as she drew near; “it’s not him—’tis a wumman!”
“Oh, do let me in,” I pleaded. “See how it rains! I only ask for shelter until the storm is over.”
She signed to me to go round to the door, and in another moment my feet were on the sanded floor within.
“Dear o’ me,” she cried, “yo’re wet, ma’am; yo’re terrible wet. I wish I’d ha’ heerd yo’ before, but wind and rain were makkin’ sich a din I didn’t notice nothin’.”
“And when you did notice, you took me for a ghost, I think,” I said, laughing, but feeling still a little aggrieved.
No trace of the strange expression which I had noticed on her face when I had first summoned her lingered there as she admitted me, but at these careless words of mine I saw it come again.
“Coom nigh the fire,” she said, after a pause, during which she had gazed at me as one half awake.