DELIGHT
Kirke enjoyed this moment more than any other in the day. The evening meal—supper they called it at The Duke of York—was over; the busy hours between seven and eleven were just commencing. A pleasant stir of preparation was in the air, men sauntered in at the open front door, washed and brushed after their day's work, a look of anticipation and good-fellowship softening their features. Shortly the 'bus from the evening train would be clattering up to the door, leaving a half dozen travellers or possibly a theatrical troupe. It was time they had a show. There had been nothing on in the Town Hall for weeks.
Kirke lounged against the newel post, filling his pipe and staring with shrewd, light-blue eyes into the faces that passed him. He was in the way where he stood; his legs were long, and he had crossed them, the toe of one foot resting on the linoleum, one sharp elbow thrust outward behind him. He rather liked being in the way. It gave him a feeling of superiority to have people edging their way around him, and he did not in the least mind the surly looks that were occasionally turned on him. Once Charley Bye, the porter who always lent a hand in the evening, tripped over his foot while carrying a tray to one of the small drinking-rooms, and jarred the foaming "head" over the polished glasses; in short, barely saved himself from arriving headlong with the refreshment. Bill Bastien, the head bartender and manager, came to the door of the bar. His erect, lithe figure was thrown out against a glittering background of glasses and mirrors. He was drying his hands on a clean white towel.
"What the hell—" he said.
"Chairley's been falling over himself in his zeal," replied Kirke.
"Mr. Bastien," said Charley, breathing heavily, "I stumbled over Mr. Kirke's foot which he sticks out that way a-purpose to mortify me."
"That's a dairty lie," observed Kirke, smiling. "He never looks where he's going, and you know it."
Bastien was too busy for argument. His opaque, dark-blue eyes glanced sharply, first at the offending foot, then at the glasses on the tray. With a frown he strode to the door of the drinking-room and looked in. The customers gathered about the table there were not of the fastidious order. They wanted their drinks and wanted them soon. They were rapping impatiently on the table.
"All right, boys," he said cheerily. "Here we are. Charley's lost his way in the crowd. Next time he'll be smarter." He laid his hand heavily on Charley's broad shoulder and steered him into the room. Then he returned briskly to the bar where business was now becoming lively.
A rich smell of ale and spirits filled the air. A sustained flow of men's voices came from all sides, sometimes ebbing to a low drone, sometimes swelling to a vigorous burst of laughter. Night had fallen. The March air was cold, and the heavy, green door was closed after each fresh arrival. Four men from the dye works came in together, their hands, in spite of scrubbing, stained by the dyes they worked in. Then, half a dozen tannery hands, bringing with them their own peculiar nauseating scent. Kirke knew them and nodded curtly.
"It's a fine nicht," he said, biting off the vowels like bits of ice.
"Yes, it's not bad," agreed one.
"It's blowing up a mist," said another.
"Perhaps you'd call this fine in Scotland," said a third.
"We'd call you a fine fool in Scotland," bit off Kirke, grinning.
The men passed into the bar. The noise increased, rising to a hubbub, then suddenly falling to a murmur accented by low laughs, the clink of glasses, the drawing of corks. The smell of dyes, the smell of the tannery, mingled with the smell of the bar. A blue cloud of tobacco smoke formed before Kirke's eyes. It floated in long level shreds that moved quiveringly together till they formed one mass that hung like a magic carpet in the hall. He watched it contemplatively, his lips still in the formation of exhaling. He hoped very much that Charley Bye would not pass through it before it reached the dining-room door.
In the most select of the three little drinking-rooms a hand was striking a table-bell at sharp, regular intervals: ding, ding, ding-ding, ding. Charley appeared to take the order.
"Chairley, dive under yon cloud, d'ye hear?" said Kirke, indicating the magic carpet with his pipe. "Dive under, mon, or it'll be the worse for ye."
With a bewildered look, like a timid bull that desires only to avoid the tormenting matador, Charley ducked heavily under the smoke cloud and disappeared into the drinking-room. Still perfect, of a lovely azure against the dark walls, the magic carpet floated on. Kirke was in good humour. In another moment the 'bus would arrive. He would see what passengers there were, and then saunter into the bar with Mr. Fowler, the owner of the 'bus. Fowler probably would treat him. He usually did. And if not, well, he would have one anyway.
The horses' hoofs made a tremendous clatter on the pavement. The driver's voice was raised in hoarse "whoas" and "backs." The wheels crashed with a jar against the high kerb which always made one wonder how the 'bus (to say nothing of the passengers) withstood it. The front door was thrown open, and the jangle of harness, as the horses threw their heads about to ease their wrenched mouths, the depositing of luggage, and the clink of coin could be heard. Kirke put his pipe in his pocket and approached the door. Three commercial travellers entered, two of them young and alert, one elderly, with an expression of mild boredom. They turned into the office to register and choose sample-rooms. Kirke looked at them keenly. He had seen all three before. The elderly man nodded to him with a friendly air.
"It's a fine nicht," said Kirke.
Arthur Crosby, old Colonel Crosby's youngest son, came in hurriedly. He pushed past Kirke and entered the bar. Kirke threw an indignant look after him. "Young upstairt," he muttered. He took off the black bowler hat which he wore to one side, and passed a bony hand over his sleek blond head as the sound of women's voices came from the porch. Old Country voices they were.
The women were in the hotel now, followed by old Davy, the ostler, carrying a tin box, bearing steamship labels. They were young, Kirke saw that at once; little more than a girl, the big one, and the short one, still fresh enough to be interesting. Fowler came heavily after them.
"Where's the housekeeper?" he asked of Kirke. "I've got the new help here for her."
"It's a fine nicht," said Kirke, his eyes, which had become two points of pale fire, concentrated on the faces of the girls before him.
"Damp enough," replied the 'bus driver, shaking himself. "Go straight upstairs, girls, and ask for Mrs. Jessop. You'll see to their boxes, Davy. See that they get hold of Mrs. Jessop. Speak right up to her, girls, don't be afraid. . . . They only arrived in Montreal yesterday," he said to Kirke. "Come along and have one on me." He moved towards the bar.
"Thanks, I will," said Kirke. "I'll take the girls upstairs first, and find Mrs. Jessop. It's an easy place to get lost in. You'd better carry their boxes through and take them up the backstairs, Davy. Mrs. Jessop'll no like ye mounting the front with them, at this hour, with the commaircial gentlemen about.
As they ascended the stairway, the shorter of the two girls said: "I'm sure we're much obliged to you, sir, for your trouble. We're a bit dazed after the long journey, and with the strange plice and all."
"Ay, it's a long way to come for two young geerls," said Kirke. "I wonder sometimes how you get the pluck. But you will do it. I suppose there are motives to bring ye, eh?" He gave a short laugh like a bark and grinned down at her.
"Well, a girl 'as to live, 'asn't she?" There was an exhilarating spice of impudence in her tone. The electric lamp at the head of the stairs cast its pale, searching light over her short, freshly-coloured face, surrounded by frizzed, sandy hair, under a drooping white hat that registered in its dents and smudges every day and night of the long journey. Her red lips parted over teeth that were not her own, but good ones nevertheless: probably much whiter and more even than the original set.
"Ay, and live on the fat of the land she will, though the rest of us stairve. Isn't that so? What does your friend think? Has she no word to say?" He looked from the point he had reached at the top of the stairs down at the figure coming slowly up, weighted by a canvas-covered basket. Her hat shielded her face, but he saw the curve of a splendid young breast under a thin black blouse, and a rounded throat that gleamed like white satin.
"Make 'aste, my dear," said the short one. She turned with a smile to Kirke. "Such a sleepy'ead as she is I never seen. Just like a 'ealthy kiddie. Eat, and sleep, and enjoy 'erself."
"I'm tired, I am," came a low, deep voice from under the hat.
Kirke went down a few steps and took the basket from her. "Weel," he said, "it's weighty enough. What have ye got in here, anyway? Gold sovereigns?"
"It's a tea-set," she explained. "It was my grandmother's what brought me up. I've never been parted from it on any journey, and I shan't be, if it was ever so."
She was now in the clear light. Kirke all but let the basket drop in the fulness of his astonishment. He was used to pretty girls. There had been many a pretty face and form among the maids in The Duke of York. The girls in the glove factory and the jam factory were often much more than passable. His bright, questing eyes had not roved unappeased. But now he realized that he had never before seen real beauty. He was like a hunter who had sauntered forth in search of rabbit, and suddenly, without a sign, a footprint to warn him, come upon a milk-white doe that gazed at him out of liquid eyes of unconcern. He caught his breath with a sort of snarl of surprise. He bit his lip, and tugged at his small, straw-coloured moustache. For the first time since he was grown to manhood he could find nothing to say.
The three walked in silence through an empty hallway past rows of closed, numbered doors, along a narrow passage that branched off from it, down three deeply worn uncarpeted steps, stopped in a still narrower passage, pervaded by a smell of past meals from the kitchens below, and lighted by an oil lamp in a bracket.
"These are the help's quarters," muttered Kirke, setting down the basket. He knocked on a door, under which a line of light shone. "Mrs. Jessop!" he called. At the same instant Davy was seen at the top of the backstairs along the passage carrying the tin box on his shoulder. He set it down with a small crash. "Ha!" he exclaimed, "you young maids have to bring your finery with you!"
The door on which Kirke had knocked opened and Mrs. Jessop appeared against a background of wooden boxes, tin tea, coffee, and spice containers and sides of smoked meat suspended from the ceiling. She was the housekeeper, a short stout woman with coarse grey hair and a wide mouth which could change a broad smile into lines of grimness or ferocity with amazing quickness. She had private means, in fact, was the widow of a small hotel-keeper, and was always talking about retiring from her present situation and "living private," but for some reason she remained. It was whispered in the scullery that her love for Bill Bastien, nearly twenty years her junior, was the reason.
"So," she said, staring hard at the two young women, "you're the girls sent out by the agency. Ever worked in a hotel before?"
"Yes," answered the short one, "I've been five years a 'ousemaid in a public-'ouse in Camden Town. I can do laundry work too, and know how to clean silver and brasses, and put a cake together in a pinch."
"What is your name?"
"May Phillips."
"They told you what wages I'd give at the agency, did they?"
"Oh, yes."
"And you," she said, turning to the tall girl, beside whom Kirke still stood, not looking at her but feeling the subtle power of her presence in every nerve. "What have you been used to?"
"Waiting at table," came in her low, husky voice, with a slight Somerset accent.
"That's good. What's your name?"
The girl hesitated, and her companion answered for her, "Miss Mainprize, 'er nime is."
"H'm. We don't do any 'Miss-ing' here. I want your first name."
May Phillips giggled and looked at her friend teasingly. "She's a bit shy about 'er first nime."
Mrs. Jessop grinned. "Go ahead, girl. Don't be shy of me. I guess I've heard all the funny names that ever got tacked on to anyone."
"Out with it," interposed Kirke. "It'll no raise a laugh out o' me, if it's Hepzibah, or Keziah."
"It's not funny," answered the girl, an angry tremor in her voice. "It's beautiful. It's too beautiful for here. I'd not have coom here if I'd thought you'd make game of me."
Mrs. Jessop jingled the keys in her apron pocket and laughed loudly but good-humouredly. "Very well," she said. "I'll show you your room now, and you can whisper your name to me after the lights are out." She flung open a door across the passage and turned the light in a small room, scantily furnished, but clean.
"I'll give a hand with your boxes," she said cheerfully. May Phillips and she began at once to drag the two tin boxes across the linoleum-covered floor into the bedroom. Kirke and the stately girl were left alone in the passage, beneath the oil lamp. She was almost as tall as he. With a sigh she pulled off her drooping hat, disarranging the hair about her ears. It was a shining, pale gold, springing from the roots with strong vitality, waving closely over her head, and clinging in little curls about her temples and nape. But her skin was not blond. Rather the exquisite, golden brown of some rare brunettes, with a warm glow on the cheeks, as when firelight touches the surface of a lovely brazen urn. Her eyes were an intense, dark brown, sleepy now, under thick lashes that seemed to cling together wilfully as though to veil the emotion reflected in their depths. Here was mystery, thought Kirke. And her mouth, he thought, was the very throne of sweetness, as it curved with parted lips, pink as a pigeon's feet. His shrewd eyes observed the lovely line that swept from her round chin to her breast, her perfect shoulders, her strong neck, her hands coarsened by work. He moved closer to her.
"Come, my dear," he said, "tell me your name."
She shook her head. "You'd laugh."
"I'm as likely to greet as to laugh. Out with it," he persisted.
She was too tired to resist him. "I'll whisper it," she said.
He took off his bowler hat and bent his ear towards her mouth, a grin stretching his thin lips.
"It's Delight," she whispered. "Delight. That's all. Delight Mainprize."
"Delight," he whispered back. "It's a bonny name. It suits ye fine. Delight. Ha! I'll no forget it."
He did not raise his head but screwed his eyes around till they were looking into her face now so close to his. Her eyes were no longer sleepy. Laughing lights played in and out of them. She blinked as though trying to separate her lashes. Her face had broadened, dimples dented her cheeks, her wide mouth curved upward showing two rows of square white teeth. Little ripples of laughter seemed to quiver over her face. Expectancy, curiosity, simple animal joy in life were there. Delight indeed! She was well named.
Kirke almost ran downstairs. His stiff, high-shouldered figure in light-grey tweed elbowed a way through the crowd that now thronged the hall and bar. He found Fowler and had a drink with him but he was restless. His eyes were constantly on the doorway. It seemed that Lovering, his friend and room-mate, would never come. Then, at last, his burly figure filled the opening. Their eyes met. Kirke beckoned with a jerk of the chin. Fowler muttered good-night and Lovering took his place, leaning against the counter and strumming on it with his thick fingers. He was a Yorkshireman with curly dark hair and violet eyes. He ordered a glass of beer in a deep rolling voice.
"Charley Bye's got it in for you," he said. "He says you tripped him oop in the hall and then complained of him to Bill."
"Lovering," said Kirke, "you should see the new geerl. Two came on the 'bus just now. Man, she's a screaming beauty if ever one screamed. You never saw the like. I've just come down from taking her to Mrs. Jessop. Lovering, she'll mak' that cairly hair of yours stand on end when you see her."
Lovering took his face from his glass. "Tha' art always oop in the air about some lass," he said skeptically.
"Ay, but never one like this."
"A fine looker, eh? What is she like?"
"I can't describe her, except that she's tall and nobly built, and she's got a red-hot look in the eyes that mak's your blood tingle."
Lovering gave his slow grin. "Tha' art gone on her already, then."
Kirke stiffened. "Ye know I look higher than that, Lovering, but I can admire the lass."
"Listen to what Fergussen's saying," interrupted Lovering. "What a fellow he is to talk!"
Fergussen, the fishmonger, was standing with his back to the wall, a smile broadening his blunt-featured face. He had been born in Halifax, of Scotch parents, had gone to England as a child, had shipped aboard a West Indian trader at fifteen, had worked on a sheep farm in Australia, a coffee plantation in Ceylon, had fought in the Boer War, was, as he said, one of the strands that held the Empire together.
He took another sip from his glass, smacked his lips, and said: "To continoo our conversation, what gets me is 'ow some people can be so stoopid. They don't know nothing. When I sees 'em, I says to myself—'Fergussen, they're not made of the same stuff as you are. They have no brain power, no sense. Not as much sense as the ground they stands on.' For the ground, mind you, 'as a certain amount of sense. It knows enough to grow things. It knows enough to cover up a dead man when he's laid in it, now isn't that so? But a lot of the people I meet, their ignorance makes me sick." He took another drink, set down his glass, and went on—"Perhaps I make them sick, too. Like I did an old cadger once. I was courtin' his daughter. Not that I was very serious, mind, but I was willin' to pass a silly hour with 'er, now and again, even if it did cost me a dollar. And she liked a silly hour with me, and she liked the look of my dough. . . . This night there was a big storm on and we were sittin' close by the fire and 'er old people was in bed in the next room. Suddenly the old man says to 'is old woman—'Well, my old dearie, you and me is safe under our own roof, and none but a fool of no account, whatsomever, would be out a night like this!' Those were his words out of the darkness of his bed, and you can bet it wasn't long till I was makin' the way shorter 'ome."
"Did you ever go back?" shouted a voice from the hall.
Fergussen puffed out his lips. "Do I look like a man who would go sneakin' back arter a hinsult like that? Do I now?"
"What about the girl?" asked another.
"Ho! You expect me to tell you about the girl, eh? Well, I'll just say this, that we spent a few more silly hours together in spite of the old folk." He gave a jolly wink at Bastien.
Three men off a barge and the stoker of a coaling schooner now came in, for Brancepeth was a lake port, as well as the centre of a fruit-growing district.
The bar was now full. Business was at its height. The air quivered with light, with the mingled odours of the men's bodies and of the trades they worked in, with the grateful smell of wine and spirits. The din of voices crashed against the rows of delicately shining glasses. Flushed, laughing, or argumentative faces were reflected in the long mirrors. Someone on the street outside was playing a Jew's-harp. Fergussen began to do a hornpipe in his crowded corner, now and again uttering a sharp yell. Edwin Silk, a broken-down remittance man, feebly drunk, tried to pull him off his feet. "Don't dance, you damned fishmonger," he ordered, "it makesh me dizhy." Fergussen knocked him down without ceasing to dance. At a nod from Bastien, Charley Bye helped Silk to his feet and mildly led him outside.
Lovering, with his eternal lazy smile, still strummed with his fingers on the bar. "Now, about this lass, Kirke. Tell me more about her. What is her name?"
Two bright spots burned on Kirke's high cheek-bones. "Delight," he returned slowly, as though he savoured the name on his tongue, and he proceeded to give a minute description of her.
Upstairs, in a small room, lighted by a smoky oil lamp, the two girls were getting ready for bed. May Phillips, in pink stays and a short, wrinkled green silk petticoat, was trying to drag a comb through her frizzed hair. Hairpins flew in all directions.
"Ow, damn my 'air!" she exclaimed. "I 'ave to pull it out by the roots almost, to comb it. I 'ope I don't reely look the speckled beauty this glass shows me. Where's my curling-pins now? Kid! Do you know?"
"In the little pink bag. Why don't you give your hair a rest? It never gets out of one frizz till you put it in another. It 'ud be pretty a little bit straight like."
"It's all very well for you to talk with a crop of natural curls as thick as a seryphim's. If I didn't frizz my 'air there'd be nothing of it."
"Well, frizz away, but do hurry. Oo-er, I'm tired." She had been sitting on the side of the bed pulling off her stockings, and now she flung herself back on to the pillow, opening her mouth in a wide yawn and stretching her arms above her head. Her chemise, drawn upward, disclosed her strong, white thighs, glistening in the lamplight. She rocked her body from side to side in an abandon of relaxation.
"Oo-er, it's nice to get your duds off! What do you think of this place, May?"
"It's 'ard to tell the first night. Old Jessop's on 'er good be'aviour. I make a guess that she's a tartar. The other two girls seem nice, but you can't never tell. Cook's got a pleasant way wiv 'er. I think I'll like cook."
"Oh, May, ain't her tooth funny?"
"If I 'ad it, I'd bite that soft-'eaded 'usband of 'ers, Charley, wiv it. I can't stand a simple man."
Delight rolled over on her face and smothered her laughter. "Oh, you are a rip, May!"
"Stop your laughing or you'll 'ave old Jessop in 'ere arter us. Stow it now, or I'll be over to you wiv the brush. You're pretty 'andy, lying like that. Did your Granny ever take the brush to you, Delight?"
"No. She never gave me more than a little tap with her hand."
"You'd be a better girl if she 'ad."
"Oh, May, I'm not bad."
"Well, perhaps not, but I bet your Granny would be glad you'd got me to look arter you."
"I bet she would." She lay still a moment, then rolled over on her back again and looked up at her friend with dancing eyes. "I say, May, what do you think of the brawny Scot? 'Fine nicht!' he said. I'm going to call him 'Fine Nicht.' Isn't it a good name for him? Isn't he a scream?"
"I think 'e's 'andsome. And look 'ow kind 'e was, carrying your basket and all. You're too uppish, Delight."
"He wasn't just kind, May; he was curious. He made me tell him my name, out there in the passage. I mean to have a little fun with him."
May, now in her nightdress, her head covered with curling-pins, said solemnly: "You better be careful of men out 'ere. You're in a strange country, and you 'aven't no one to look arter you but me."
"You hop into bed, old Lady Croak. You hate men yourself, don't you?"
May turned out the light and got into the narrow, lumpy bed beside her. She had not opened the window, and the air was filled with the smell of the charred wick. A steady hum of voices rose from the bar. She turned towards the young girl and laid her arms across her supple hips.
"Is my tea-set safe?" whispered Delight.
"In a corner of the clothes cupboard. I laid a petticoat over it in case anyone comes nosing around in the morning."
"I think I'll put it under the bed tomorrow. It'd be safer there."
"Oh, you silly, under the bed's the first place any burglar 'ud look."
"Under the bed! Oo—May, s'pose there was someone under the bed now! S'pose he'd been there waitin' for us!" She wriggled frantically against May. "S'pose it was Fine Nicht! Oo—May." They laughed hysterically, clutching each other.
"Well, I'm not going to get out and look," said May. "If he wants to sleep under the bed he can."
"Oh, May, do strike a light and see."
"You settle down. You're worse than a kid." She administered a slight smack.
They lay still save for an occasional giggle that quivered through their muscles. At last the elder spoke, seriously: "Delight, I'm going to tell you a secret. I never intended to, but now, just at the last minute, I must. I can't go asleep till I do. Ain't it funny?"
"How can I tell till I hear it?"
"Oh, the secret ain't a bit funny. You wait till you 'ear it."
"Get it out, old girl."
May buried her face in Delight's curls, and, with her mouth against her ear, whispered: "I'm married."
"Married! Oh, May, and you never told me!"
"Ssh! Don't talk out loud. I couldn't make up my mind to before. I wanted to see wot the plice was like first. But now I've got to. I'm so worried."
"Is he here? Are you coming out to him?"
"Yes. 'E works in the tannery. 'E boards in this very hotel. Ain't it thrillin'? But the trouble is I got Annie to tell me the nimes of the boarders tonight, and she never mentioned 'is. I'm frightened. S'pose 'e's gone away! Wouldn't it be awful?"
"Why wasn't he at the station to meet you?"
"'E don't know I'm comin'. 'E was to send for me when 'e 'ad saved up enough, but 'e kept putting me off and I'd worked 'ard myself and saved every penny I could till I'd enough for my passage and to furnish a couple of rooms, then I didn't write or nothink but just come straight out to surprise 'im."
"Lord, May, I can't think of you as married. What's his name?"
"Albert. Albert Masters."
"You're May Masters, then, reely, not May Phillips."
"Yes."
"What's he like? Handsome as Fine Nicht?"
"'E's not 'andsome at all. 'E's a little thickset fellow wiv bulgy blue eyes and a space between 'is two front teeth wot makes 'is smile sort of infantile, too. Oh, 'e ain't wot you'd ever call 'andsome, Delight, but 'e's charmin', 'e reely is."
"H'm," said Delight, pondering deeply.
"And 'e's got a masterful way wiv 'im, too, that a girl likes. 'E quite scares me sometimes, 'specially when 'e 'as a bit o' drink inside 'im. But then, again, 'e'll cry if I look cross at 'im."
"Oh, May, it must be funny to be married."
"Sometimes. Sometimes it's awful. When you don't know where 'e is, or wot 'e's up to. Just s'pose 'e's gone off wiv another woman."
"He'd never leave you for a Canadian girl."
"You can't tell wot they'll do when they gets out to Canader. Oh, I feel it in my bones there's something wrong. W'y ain't 'e 'ere?" She began to sob hysterically.
Delight pressed her to her breast. "Don't you take on, May," she whispered. "Tomorrow night it'll be Albert 'stead of me."
"Oh, if I only were sure," sobbed May. But she was too tired to cry for long. The heaving of her shoulders ceased. She lay supine in Delight's arms. The girl still rhythmically patted her back. She drew her head back on the pillow, for one of May's curling-pins pressed cruelly into her cheek. "Poor old girl," she thought. "It must be awful to be married."
Faces of men floated before her half-closed eyes. The pimply face of the son of the publican for whom she had last worked. He had squatted beside her on the floor she was wiping up, and had put his heavy arm around her and tried to kiss her. How funny his face had looked when she had slopped the soapy water over his shiny shoes. Then there came the face of Artie Blythe who had come to see her off at Southampton. Poor little Artie with his pasty clerk's face all woebegone and a funny bunch of flowers held out towards her. Then the waiter on the steamship who used to glide to her in the dark with dainties stolen from the first-cabin pantries. Then the trainman who leant over her seat to point out mountains and valleys, and teach her to say the names of the French villages. How he laughed at the way she said them! Funny creatures, men! Now, here was Kirke. She saw his piercing eyes, the pink spots on his cheek-bones, his red tie, tied just so. She couldn't help it if men liked her, wanted to stare at her and get close to her. She couldn't help it any more than her mother could. Her mother could not have been very much ashamed of having her or she would not have called her Delight. It sounded as though she'd been glad to have her. Well, anyway, God had made her the same as other folk. She began to laugh softly, opening her mouth wide in the darkness, making little clucking noises. What fun God must have had making her! Her hair for one thing. Well, even God would laugh to think of all those tight yellow curls. And her eyes—God must have laughed into them, for there was always a laugh behind them.
Oh, it was wicked to think of God in that way! Just as though He would laugh like other folk! Or even smile! No wonder Gran had worried about her. As soon as she could find time she would unpack Gran's tea-set and see if it had got a crack or chip coming over.
Down in the bar someone was playing a fiddle. She had often heard that queer, jiggy tune at home. Perhaps it wouldn't be so different here, after all. . . . Like waves the men's voices rose and fell, and, at last, submerged her in sleep.