quiet place where the growing pheasants were reared; the keeper in his
shirt-sleeves was kneeling, hammering. The dog trotted forward with a short,
sharp bark, and the keeper lifted his face suddenly and saw her. He had a
startled look in his eyes.
He straightened himself and saluted, watching her in silence, as she
came forward with weakening limbs. He resented the intrusion; he cherished
his solitude as his only and last freedom in life.
`I wondered what the hammering was,' she said, feeling weak and
breathless, and a little afraid of him, as he looked so straight at her.
`Ah'm gettin' th' coops ready for th' young bods,' he said, in broad
vernacular.
She did not know what to say, and she felt weak. `I should like to sit
down a bit,' she said.
`Come and sit 'ere i' th' 'ut,' he said, going in front of her to the
hut, pushing aside some timber and stuff, and drawing out a rustic chair,
made of hazel sticks.
`Am Ah t' light yer a little fire?' he asked, with the curious naîvetè
of the dialect.
`Oh, don't bother,' she replied.
But he looked at her hands; they were rather blue. So he quickly took
some larch twigs to the little brick fire-place in the corner, and in a
moment the yellow flame was running up the chimney. He made a place by the
brick hearth.
`Sit 'ere then a bit, and warm yer,' he said.
She obeyed him. He had that curious kind of protective authority she
obeyed at once. So she sat and warmed her hands at the blaze, and dropped
logs on the fire, whilst outside he was hammering again. She did not really
want to sit, poked in a corner by the fire; she would rather have watched
from the door, but she was being looked after, so she had to submit.
The hut was quite cosy, panelled with unvarnished deal, having a little
rustic table and stool beside her chair, and a carpenter's bench, then a big
box, tools, new boards, nails; and many things hung from pegs: axe, hatchet,
traps, things in sacks, his coat. It had no window, the light came in
through the open door. It was a jumble, but also it was a sort of little
sanctuary.
She listened to the tapping of the man's hammer; it was not so happy.
He was oppressed. Here was a trespass on his privacy, and a dangerous one! A
woman! He had reached the point where all he wanted on earth was to be
alone. And yet he was powerless to preserve his privacy; he was a hired man,
and these people were his masters.
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