She had spread a clean, homespun linen cloth on the table under the cheese and the jug of cider, even though she disliked the agent and suspected his errand. Private feeling must not interfere with hospitality.
He, for his part, accepted her attentions as a right, making as free with the cheese and bread and cider as if they had been ordered at an inn, with the relishing consciousness they would not have to be paid for.
'Perhaps,' said he, after a good draught of the cider, 'you learned to make that in England too?' the old ugly smile on his thin lips.
'Partly, sir. In Herefordshire.'
Narrowed as were the slits between his eyelids, nothing escaped his roving eyes.
'What's that?' he ejaculated, pointing with his riding whip, as he rose to depart, to a rudely-constructed tower William was raising on the oak chest with his stone chips. The boy had backed into a corner in front of his sister Jonet, as if he recognised a foe in the stranger. Shyness he had none.
His mother explained. 'Willem's building a Tower of Babil.'
'Humph! If he can do that, he might be set to something useful. There,' said Mr. Pryse, 'that will find him employment,' and, with a stroke of his whip, he swept down the boy's tower, a malicious chuckle shaking his skinny throat as he strode out of the kitchen to mount his horse.
As he rode away he heard a boy's passionate scream behind him, and felt the sharp pelting of a couple of small stones between his shoulders. He turned round in his saddle, and shook his whip-hand at the child, who, with face aflame, cried after him—