The Woodlanders

, which was ample and of wood. With a bill-hook in one hand and a leather glove, much too large for her, on the other, she was making spars,

e — with which the fire was maintained; in front, a pile of the finished articles. To produce them she took up each gad, looked critically at it from end to end, cut i

l position of the household in the past was almost as definitively shown by the presence of this article as that of an esquire or nobleman by his old helmets or shields. It had been customary for every well-to-do villager, whose tenure was by copy of court-roll, or in any wa

nough with her to subdue it to what it worked in. As with so many right hands born to manual labor, there was nothing in its fundamental shape to bear out the physiological conventionalism that gradations of birth, gentle or mean, show themselves primarily in the f

to be interpreted as readily as a child’s look by an intruder. In years she was no more than nineteen or twenty, but the necessity of taking thought at a too early period of life had forced the provisional curves of her childhood’s face to a premature finality. Thus she had but little pretension to be

ows of a pair of scissors, whose polish made them feebly responsive to the light within. In her present beholder’s mind the scene formed by the girlish spar-maker composed itself into a post-Raffaelite picture of extremest quality,

n turned at the crunch of his boots on the sanded floor, and exclaiming, “

shut your door — then

u look as unnatural out of your shop as a canary in a thorn-h

nd she winced. “Do you agree?” he continued. “It is necessary that I should

in hopes you had thought no more of i

sitting down on the coffin-stool table. “H

awake, and he don’t know

id the man, more softly

thousand,” she

ou making

e timber-dealer,

y can you ma

ght, three bundles — that

ble monetary magnetism necessary to overpower the resistant force of her present purse and the woman’s love of comeliness, “here’s a sovereign — a gold sovereign, almost new.” He held i

n’t the lady send to some other girl who don’

d ’tis a shade you can’t match by dyeing. But you are not going

sell it — to

and won’t be particular to a few shillings; so I will advance to this on my own r

evil to Dr. Faustus in the penny book. But I don’t want your money, and won’t agree. Why did you come? I said when

it badly. And, between you and me, you’d better le

e? Who is

ongue, and the girl r

d as she is going abroad soon it mak

it to go

reflectively. “Barber Percombe,” she said, “I know

f you agree to let me have it

ave it unless you tell me the

to get it. As she won’t wear it till she goes off abroad, she knows nobody will recognize the change. I’m commissioned to get it for her, and then it is to be made up. I shouldn’t have vamped all these miles for

aid Marty, coolly. “But my hair is

d your father is ill, and wouldn’t like to turn out, it would be as well to oblige her. I say that as a friend. But I won’t press you to make up your min

more to say,

ey are. Bring the hair tomorrow, or return the sovereigns.” He stuck them edgewise into the frame of a small mantle looking-glass. “I hope you’ll bring it, for your sake and mine. I should have thought she coul

oo much to spoil ’em. She wants my hair to get another lover with; though i

arber. “I’ve had it from them that know that there certainly i

ing to get hi

coffin-stool, and looked her in the face. “Marty South,” he said, with delibera

e on one hand, took up the hook with the other, and sat down doggedly to her work without turning her face to him aga

the room, where she opened a door which disclosed a staircase so whitely scrubbed that the grain of the wood was wellnigh sodde

ative; adding, “I should be all right b

Oh, father, don’t worry so about th

ad talking to

e said, soothingly. “Father,” she went on, “can Mrs.

orne’s. But when my life drops ’twill be hers — not till then.” His words on this subject so far had been rational and fi

be?” She refrained from further speech,

d to herself, “what belongs t