“And now what’s the mystery?” Tyson asked, seating himself on one of the stools.
“There is none,” she answered, standing before him where the firelight fell on her dark face and gipsy beauty. “Call it a whim if you like. Perhaps I don’t want my lads to come in till I’ve raddled my cheeks! Or perhaps”—flippantly—“Oh, any ‘perhaps’ you like!”
“I know no lad you have but me,” he said.
“I don’t know one,” she answered, seating herself on the settle, and bending forward with her elbows on her knees and her face between her hands. It was a common pose with her. “When I’ve a lad I want a man!” she continued—“a man!”
“Don’t you call me a man?” he answered, his eyes taking their fill of her face.
“Of a sort.” she rejoined disdainfully. “Of a sort. Good enough for here. But I shan’t live all my life here! D’you ever think what a God-forsaken corner this is, Tyson? Why, man, we are like mice in a dark cupboard, and know as much of the world!”
“What’s the world to us?” he asked. Her words and her ways were often a little beyond him.
“That’s it!” she answered, in a tone of contemptuous raillery. “What’s the world to us? We are here and not there. We must curtsey to parson and bob to curate, and mind our manners with the overseers! We must be proud if Madam inquires after our conduct, but we must not fancy that we are the same flesh and blood as she is! Ah, when I meet her,” with sudden passion, “and she looks at me to see if I am clean, I—do you know what I think of? Do you know what I dream of? Do you know what I hope”—she snapped her strong white teeth together—“ay, hope to see?”
“What?”
“What they saw twenty years ago in France—her white neck under the knife! That was what happened to her and her like there, I am told, and I wish it could happen here! And I’d knit, as girls knitted there, and counted the heads that fell into the baskets! When that time comes Madam won’t look to see if I am clean!”