Hartas ate on phlegmatically, pushing his meat on to the knife with the fork, and thence conveying it with a pump-handle-like motion to his mouth. When he had finished he placed them cross-wise on the plate, drew the back of his hand across his lips, and tilted his chair, sticking his thumbs into the armholes of his coat.
'There's t' sale ower at Northside Edge to-day,' he said.
'Yes. Poor Mrs. Carling, how she'll feel it!'
'I met Luke Brockell when I wer i' Wonston some days back, and he wer talking o' taking his trolly up. He has his trolly, but he's lost his nag, dropped in a fit.'
'Then how could he take it up, and what would be the use of it? Does he want to put it in the sale?'
Hartas chuckled, leering at her with a scowling grin.
'Thee never wer a bright un, Scilla. All t' glint o' thy wits has run to waste in your hair. I kenned that when Kit gave you hare soup, and you never guessed what it was nor where it came from. There, there, no call to flare up! What, there's a glint in your temper too, is there?'
Scilla had turned deathly white, and pushed her chair back hastily, making a harsh sound on the roughly-paved floor that somehow suggested to Hartas the sound her voice would have had had she spoken. She looked at him with a threatening disdain as she stood a moment balancing her slight figure against the table, and apparently expecting him to speak. He did not, however, and she went to the door. Opening it, she leant against the lintel. There was something piteously like the fog that shrouded the world in the wanness that had overclouded her face. The sweet clearness of the blue eyes was gone. More than a suspicion of tears weighted their lids and lurked in the trembling of her mouth. But she was determined not to cry. It was not to fall a prey to the ready scoff that she had won her way through tribulation to a calm that—whatever the shocks of the future—should be abiding.
And at that moment the sky cleared, and a growing light which, in the absorption of Hartas's confidences, she had not noticed, burst into a ray of sunshine.
It fell upon her. She turned, and going in again sat down on the settle. A smile had flitted over her face.