“Will I get supper now?” asked Nan, trying to distract him.
“What a packet of folk we had!” Silas broke out; “it was rat-tat at the door all the time, till the whole village had passed through, I should say.”
“Folks are kindly,” said Nan.
“Folks are curious,” barked Silas.
She sighed, but, knowing better than to remonstrate, resumed her question.
“Will you have supper now, Silas?” and she repeated the question on her fingers to Gregory. “We’ll eat with you, Silas, to-night. Gregory and I,—we’ll be there whenever you want us. I’ll do the house for you, and your cooking. We’ll all eat together, so long as you want us to.” She was gentle and bright.
“I don’t want your pity.”
She busied herself with getting the supper out of the oven, carrying the hot dishes carefully with a cloth. Gregory watched her, pivoting in his chair to follow her movements. Once he talked to her on his fingers: “Don’t you take no notice of Silas; he looks queer to-night,” and when she answered, “Small wonder,” a broad grin distorted his dark face. His bones and features, strongly carven, in conjunction with the muscularity of his body and the perpetual silence to which he was condemned, made him appear like a man cast in bronze. He was, moreover, singularly still; he would sit for hours without stirring, his arms folded across his chest; he never betrayed what he was thinking, but the others knew that it was always about machinery. Silas, on the other hand, was far more excitable; he was always occupied; his mind had many trains of thought which it pursued; Nan never knew which of the two brothers she found the more alarming, and life had become for her an uneasy effort to conciliate them both. She had hesitated before speaking of supper; meals seemed to accord badly with tragedy.
Silas talked unceasingly; he talked with his mouth full and many phrases were unintelligible. Now and then he mumbled, now and then raised his voice to a shout. He thundered assertions, and spat questions at Nan. Gregory sat crumbling bread and sneering at her distress. She was distressed because Silas was in one of his most uproarious moods, launching opinions on his diverse subjects, every one of which readily attained the proportions of an obsession in his mind; and she was distressed further because she had all the while the alienating sensation that her husband understood his brother better than she did, although he could hear no word. She sat between them, eating very little, while they ate voraciously. She was thinking of Hannah, who lay upstairs.
Once she asked a question. “Who’ll you get, Silas, to live with you now?”