“Well yo’ coom?”

Maggie called again and waited.  Courageous in her bright blue Sunday gown, she waited while her master rose, then, shame-faced as if driven by some sharp sign from him, she slunk into the scullery.

Jim Greatorex appeared on his threshold.

On his threshold, utterly sober, carrying himself with the assurance of the master in his own house, he would not have suffered by comparison with any man.  Instead of the black broadcloth that Alice had expected, he wore a loose brown shooting jacket, drab corduroy breeches, a drab cloth waistcoat and brown leather leggings, and he wore them with a distinction that Rowcliffe might have envied.  His face, his whole body, alert and upright, had the charm of some shy, half-savage animal.  When he stood at ease his whole face, with all its features, sensed you and took you in; the quivering eyebrows were aware of you; the nose, with its short, high bridge, its fine, wide nostrils, repeated the sensitive stare of the wide eyes; his mouth, under its golden brown moustache, was somber with a sort of sullen apprehension, till in a sudden, childlike confidence it smiled.  His whole face and all its features smiled.

He was smiling at Alice now, as if struck all of a sudden by her smallness.

“I’ve come to ask a favor, Mr. Greatorex,” said Alice.

“Ay,” said Greatorex.  He said it as if ladies called every day to ask him favors.  “Will you coom in, Miss Cartaret?” It was the mournful and musical voice that she had heard sometimes last summer on the road outside the back door of the Vicarage.

She came in, pausing on the threshold and looking about her, as if she stood poised on the edge of an adventure.  Her smallness, and the delicious, exploring air of her melted Jim’s heart and made him smile at her.

“It’s a roough plaace fer a laady,” he said.

“It’s a beautiful place, Mr. Greatorex,” said Alice.

And she did actually think it was beautiful with its stone floor, its white-washed walls, its black oak dresser and chest and settle; not because of these things but because it was on the border of her Paradise.  Rowcliffe had sent her there.  Jim Greatorex had glamour for her, less on his own account than as a man in whom Rowcliffe was interested.

“You’d think it a bit loansoom, wouldn’ yo’, ef yo’ staayed in it yeear in and yeear out?”

“I don’t know,” said Alice doubtfully.  “Perhaps—­a little,” she ventured, encouraged by Greatorex’s indulgent smile.

“An’ loansoom it is,” said Greatorex dismally.

Alice explored, penetrating into the interior.

“Oh—­but aren’t you glad you’ve got such a lovely fireplace?”

“I doan’ knaw as I’ve thought mooch about it.  We get used to our own.”

“What are those hooks for in the chimney?”

“They?  They’re fer ‘angin’ the haams on—­to smoak ’em.”

“I see.”