She, in common with the other little creatures, sat down in his shadow as in a city of refuge. Mrs. Marston shared this feeling. She always fell asleep at once when Edward was at home in the evening, ceasing to invent alarms about black men creeping through the kitchen window, Foxy getting into the larder, and a great tempest from the Lord blowing them all to perdition because Lord's Day was not kept as it used to be. Into the parlour, at his own good time, Vessons brought the supper, and dumped it on the large round table, veneered like mahogany, heavily Victorian and ornamented with brass feet. There were bread and cheese, bacon, and a good deal of beer. Hazel saw nothing amiss with it, for though she had begun to grow accustomed to respectable middle-class meals, life at the Callow still seemed the homelier. Reddin looked up from cutting bacon to say with unwonted thoughtfulness, 'Like some tea and toast?' He felt that toast was a triumph of imagination. He was rather dubious about asking Vessons to do it, so instead he repeated, 'You'll have some tea and toast?' Vessons went into the kitchen and shut the door. They waited for some time, and Hazel, who, whatever her fate, her faults and sorrows, was always as hungry as Foxy, looked longingly at Reddin's cheese and beer. Physical exhaustion brought tears of appetite to her eyes. At last Reddin went to the kitchen door. 'Where's that tea?' he asked. 'Tay?' 'Yes, you fool!' 'I know nothing about no tay.' 'I said you were to make some.' 'Not to me.' 'And toast.' 'I've douted the fire.' He had just done so. 'Look here, my man, there's a missus at Undern now. You please her or go. She tells me what she wants. I tell you. You do it.' 'I'll 'ave no woman over me!' said Vessons sullenly. 'Never will I! Never a missus did I take, not for all the pleasures of bed and board--no, ne'er a one I ever took. Maiden I am to my dying day.' The coupling of the ideas of Vessons and maidenhood was so funny that Reddin burst out laughing and forgot his anger. 'Now, make that tea, Vessons.' 'She unna be here long?' asked Vessons craftily. 'Yes, for good.' Hazel heard him. 'For good.' Did she want to be in this whispering house for good? Who did she want to be with for good? Not Reddin. Edward? But he had not the passion of the greenwood in him, the lust of the earth. He was not of the tremulously ecstatic company of wild, hunted creatures. If Reddin was definitely antagonistic, a hunter, Edward was neutral, a looker-on. They were not her comrades. They did not live her life. She had to live theirs. She wished she had never seen Reddin, never gone to Hunter's Spinney. Edward's house was at least peaceful. 'And what,' she heard Vessons say, 'will yer lordship's Sally Virtue say?'