The wind from the east soughed about the caves, whistled in the naked trees, and hissed through the coarse sea-grass and withered thrift; whilst from afar came the mutter of a peevish sea. The woman was tall, had fine features of a powerful cast, with eyes in which slumbered volcanic fire. Her cheeks were flushed, her rich, dark hair, caught by the wind and sopped by the mist, was dishevelled under her battered hat. She was not above thirty-six years old.
The girl she held and drew along was about eighteen. She partook of her mother's fineness of profile and darkness of eye. If there were in her features some promise or threat of the resolution that characterised her mother's countenance, it was tempered by a lurking humour that would not suffer them to set to hardness.
This woman, holding her daughter with a grip of iron, stood in the doorway of a farm, talking with, or rather at, the farmer.
'Why not? Have I not hands, arms? Can I not work? Will not she work? Prove us. I ask why you cannot take us in?'
'My good woman, we require no one.'
'But you do. You have needed me. When your wife was ill, and your hussy of a maid had run away—did you not send for me? Did I hesitate to go to you? I left then my huckstering that I might be useful in your house. That was the hour of your need. Now it is mine. Did I not at that time do my work well? Perhaps over well. Your wife said I had scrubbed the surface off the table and rubbed into holes the clothes I washed. Anyhow I did naught by halves. And your drones, they guzzle and sleep, and when you are in straits—there is sickness, disaster—then they run away. Take me and Winefred.'
'My dear Mrs. Marley, it is of no avail your persisting to thrust yourself on us. You can't stable more horses than you have stalls. I have no vacancy.'
'Your missus has turned away Louie Herne.'
'And has engaged one in her place.'
'Then give us leave to sleep in your barn, and I'll work in the fields for you, hoeing, weeding, gathering up stones—ay, better than can a man.'