CHAPTER XXX—AMONG THE HEATHER
Old Elasaid met them at the door. She was a woman with eyes profound and piercing under hanging brows, a woman grey even to the colour of her cheeks and the checks of the gown that hung loosely on her gaunt figure. It was with no shealing welcome, no kind memory of the old nurse even, she met them, but stood under her lintel looking as it were through them to the airt of the country whence they had come. She passed the time of day as if they had been strangers, puckering her mouth with a sort of unexpressed disapproval. They stood before her very much put out at a reception so different from what they had looked for, and Gilian knew that there must be something decisive to say but could not find it in his head.
“Well,” said the old woman at last, “this’ll be the good man, I’m thinking?” But still she had that in her tone, a sour dissatisfaction that showed she had her doubts.
Gilian was not unhappy at the assumption, but felt warm, and Nan reddened.
“Not at all,” she answered with some difficulty. “It’s just a friend who convoyed me up.”
“Well I kent it,” said the old woman, who spoke English to show she was displeased, and there was in her voice a tone of satisfaction with her own shrewdness. “When I saw you coming up the way there I thought there was something very unlike the thing about this person with you. The other one would have been a little closer on your elbow, and a lantern’s a very queer contrivance to be stravaiging with on a summer day.”
All her contempt seemed to be for Gilian, and he felt mightily uncomfortable.
“Tell me this,” she went on, suddenly taking Nan by the arm and bending a most condemnatory face on her; “tell mc this: did you run away from the other one?”
“Mercy on me!” cried the girl. “Is the story up here already?”
“Oh, we’re not so far back,” said the dame, who did not add that her son the seaman had told her the news on his last weekly visit.