The Rainbow

"Yes"--the long-drawn foreign yes--"yes," said the

Polish woman, "I went to Mrs. Brown's. She hasn't any more."

Tilly bridled her head, bursting to say that, according to

the etiquette of people who bought butter, it was no sort of

manners whatever coming to a place cool as you like and knocking

at the front door asking for a pound as a stop-gap while your

other people were short. If you go to Brown's you go to Brown's,

an' my butter isn't just to make shift when Brown's has got

none.

Brangwen understood perfectly this unspoken speech of

Tilly's. The Polish lady did not. And as she wanted butter for

the vicar, and as Tilly was churning in the morning, she

waited.

"Sluther up now," said Brangwen loudly after this silence had

resolved itself out; and Tilly disappeared through the inner

door.

"I am afraid that I should not come, so," said the stranger,

looking at him enquiringly, as if referring to him for what it

was usual to do.

He felt confused.

"How's that?" he said, trying to be genial and being only

protective.

"Do you----?" she began deliberately. But she was

not sure of her ground, and the conversation came to an end. Her

eyes looked at him all the while, because she could not speak

the language.

They stood facing each other. The dog walked away from her to

him. He bent down to it.

"And how's your little girl?" he asked.

"Yes, thank you, she is very well," was the reply, a phrase

of polite speech in a foreign language merely.

"Sit you down," he said.

And she sat in a chair, her slim arms, coming through the

slits of her cloak, resting on her lap.

"You're not used to these parts," he said, still standing on

the hearthrug with his back to the fire, coatless, looking with

curious directness at the woman. Her self-possession pleased him

and inspired him, set him curiously free. It seemed to him

almost brutal to feel so master of himself and of the

situation.

Her eyes rested on him for a moment, questioning, as she

thought of the meaning of his speech.

"No," she said, understanding. "No--it is strange."

"You find it middlin' rough?" he said.

Her eyes waited on him, so that he should say it again.

"Our ways are rough to you," he repeated.

"Yes--yes, I understand. Yes, it is different, it is

strange. But I was in Yorkshire----"