“Sit you down, sir. Why, bless my heart, you must be cold and damp as a dish-clout! I’ll fetch Chris down to see to your horse.”
“I have seen to him myself, Mrs. Winnie.”
She pushed forward the great box of a chair that was padded with horsehair and leather, and had been polished to a rare sheen by her husband’s breeches.
“Just you pull off your boots, sir, and rub yourself dry. I’ll have something hot in ten minutes, and a dish of bacon and some eggs.”
She was bustling with curiosity as well as with good-will, for there was something in the man’s manner that told of mystery and of strange things accomplished, and perhaps of looking deep into other eyes. He sat down obediently before the fire, and, pulling off his boots, spread himself to the blaze. Overhead they could hear the stumping of Chris Jennifer’s feet as he tumbled into his clothes with decent circumlocutions.
Mrs. Winnie came to hang the kettle on the chain, and while she was bending forward with the firelight on her face John Gore sat forward in his chair and laid a hand upon her shoulder.
“I am giving you a great deal of trouble, Mrs. Jennifer,” he said.
“Dear life, no, sir.”
“Can I ask you to do something more for me?”
She knelt and looked around at him, her honest, comely face perfectly trustful.