'Who, dear?'
'The beautiful girl.'
'A pretty tune, the first she sang,' said Mrs. Marston, not having heard the others. 'But such wild manners and such hair! Like pussy stroked the wrong way. And there is something a little peculiar about her, for when she sings about heaven it seems somehow improper, and that,' she added drowsily, 'heaven hardly should do.'
Edward understood what she meant. He had been conscious himself of something desperately exciting in the bearing of Hazel Woodus—something that penetrated the underworld which lay like a covered well within him, and, like a ray of light, set all kinds of unsuspected life moving and developing there.
As supper went on Edward kept more and more of Hazel's attention, and the quiet grey eyes met the restless amber ones more often.
'If I came some day—soon—to your home, would you sing to me?' he asked.
'I couldna. I'm promised for the bark-stripping.'
'What's that?'
Hazel looked at him pityingly.
'Dunna you know what that is?'