He smiled softly when he met her glance, but did not speak, nor would she hazard any remarks herself, for fear of being thought intrusive. All that he said during dinner was to express himself well pleased with her cooking; but she noticed, in removing the dishes, that, pleasantly as he had praised the piece of roast mutton, he had scarcely tasted it, and that of the four potatoes she had put into the dish, three and a half remained.
Whilst in the kitchen she heard him leave the house, and, when her task was done, she went upstairs to her mother’s room, whither she had conducted the old lady soon after little Nelly’s visit.
“If the gentleman don’t eat more every day than he’s just had for dinner,” said she, throwing herself back in a chair and fanning her hot face with the corner of her apron, “I reckon we shall have a funeral here before long.”
“A what!” gasped the old woman, who sat upright in a cane chair, near the open window, with an immense Bible on her right hand and her spectacles on the top of it.
“He’s no more than skin an’ bone as he is,” continued Mrs. Parrot, “but it was a picter to see him with the child. I never see a man more soft with a child before.”
“He ain’t likely to make strange nises o’ nights, is he, Sairey?” exclaimed the old woman, earnestly regarding her daughter with a pair of eyes from which all expression and light seemed literally washed out, leaving nothing but two circles of weak, dim blue.
“I don’t think so. He seems to me quiet enough. He’s fond o’ staring into the road. One might think he’s trying to find out where he is. I niver see a stranger face. He don’t look English-like, and yet he talks uncommon well. I can tell by his boots—which is square as square at the toes, and his clothes, which have an odd twist somehows—that he’s not from these parts. Maybe, he’s from Ireland.”
“I hope not, Sairey,” ejaculated the old woman, bending forward with the profoundly confidential air of old age. “I was once fellow-sarvint with a Ayrish futman as was allus talkin’ of burnin’ down houses, an’ his speech ran on so it were niver to be trusted, for niver was such lies as he used to tell. You’d best gi’ him notice, Sairey. You can say I gi’ yer more trouble nor you can well get through, and recommend Burton’s lodgin’s to him. Burton’s a strong man, and kapes dogs.”
“Tut! I’m not afeard!” said Mrs. Parrot, tossing up her hands and giving her cap a pull. “There’s no more harm in the man than there is in you, for didn’t I tell yer how he gave the girl a shillin’ and spoke that soft to it, it made me feel as if I could ha’ cried. Give him notice, and him not here a day yit! Fourteen shillin’ is fourteen shillin’ in these scarce times, to say nothin’ of his being as well-spoken a man as iver you listened to in your life; an’ as for his face, it is but as God made it, an’ beauty is but skin deep, as t’ parson says, an’ I’m for lettin’ well alone.”
“If he ain’t Ayrish,” said the old woman, stroking the back of her lean hand, “he may be very well. But sitch talk of invasions from that nashun as I used to hear when I was a gal, an’ the drink an’ shootin’ as goes on there, is enough to wet your hair with perspiration ...”