Being a person of some courage, she managed with an effort to keep her hold of the basin and to scatter the remaining grains among the fowls before addressing her terrific visitor.
"You're trespassin'," she said, with harsh self-possession. And from the grass she picked up her cheap magazine and dropped it into the basin which she had just slapped down on the bench by the door.
On the thin paper cover Dick read The Penny Pansy.
"It is not trespassing, madam," he replied in a voice whose ingratiating quality was devoid of affectation, "—it can't be trespassing for a man in great need to come for help to the nearest house."
"I'm too poor to help the poorest," objected the woman, "and I don't like your luggage, sir." And she wondered why she had sirred a cut-throat looking ruffian such as this.
Dick Bellamy wondered why the woman, in this lonely place, spoke so differently from the landlord of "The Coach and Horses." But he remembered The Penny Pansy, and felt for an opening.
Her gaze reminded him of his blood.
"It is not, madam," he said impressively, "a corpse that I carry; though how long the lady will survive, unless you can furnish us with nourishment and shelter, I dare not conjecture. This blood which you see is my own, spent in her defence."
He sat down on a chopping-block not far from the door, sliding Amaryllis to his knees, and resting her head against his shoulder.
"You can't sit there all day nursing a great, grown girl, like she was a child," said the woman.