“You will walk easier to-morrow,” she said, smiling, “and you had better buy new hose in Guildford town.”
She was still smiling when Denise bent down and kissed the coarse, laughing, good-natured mouth.
“Bah, if you had a beard, it might please me,” quoth Marpasse.
But from that moment she and Denise were friends.
The three of them slept that night in the sand-pit, Marpasse showing Denise how she could scoop a hole in the sand, and lie in comfort. And Denise slept till after the dawn had broken. When she woke, the two were packing their belongings into a sack.
Denise felt that they had been talking about her while she slept, for they eyed her a little curiously, but with no cunning or distrust. Nor was Denise’s instinct at fault. “She is not one of us,” Marpasse had said, “not yet, at all events, poor baggage.” And Marpasse had looked almost pityingly at Denise, for her face was beautiful yet very sad in sleep, bathed by its auburn hair. “She has had trouble,” Marpasse had gone on to declare; “curses, I was more like that myself once.” Whereat Isoult had jeered.
Marpasse came over, and unbound Denise’s feet, and in the doing of it, asked a few blunt questions.
“Maybe you would not be seen with us on the road?” she asked.
Denise’s brown eyes answered “why?” Marpasse looked at her and smiled.
“Where may you be going?”