“He’s a permanent lodger like. It’s a matter o’ ten year since he first coomed here, seeking rooms. I seed he was a painter lad at onst, and I says to my man--I had a man then--‘Tak’ him, George, and ye’ll ne’er repent it! He’ll be out a’ the day long a dirtying o’ bits of nice clean paper, and amusing hisself, and no trouble at all!’ ... Well, he’ll be in soon to his bit denner. Ye’ll be having a chop to yer tea, along of he?” “Oh, but can’t I have a sitting-room of my own?” “Nay, we haven’t another setting-room, honey. There’s only the big meetin’-room, ye know--’tis only fit for picnic parties, and sich like--but Mr. Rivers is a nice quiet body; he’ll not be in your way, I promise ye.” But Mrs. Elles, whatever her private wishes might have been, was resolved not to have any appearance of intruding on the hermit painter; and six o’clock--for she was ridiculously, umromantically hungry--found her established at a corner of a long-rudimentary, wooden table, built on trestles, that ran the whole length of a bare, barn-like room, evidently a recent addition to the comfortable old coaching inn, for it was high-pitched, with three tall sash windows, and the walls distempered in French grey. The floor was sanded, and its raftered ceiling was not free from spiders, that ever and anon made terrifying voyages of discovery down their shadowy webs to the end of the long table that was spread with a coarse, white cloth for her benefit. She was struck, amid all this roughness and rusticity, with the white, well-tended hands that served her. It was not a servant who stood behind her chair, and who was continually addressed from afar by the landlady as “Jane Anne!” Jane Anne was a short, thick-set young woman in a well-made black dress, and an opulent watch-chain. Mrs. Elles did not like her face, with its heavy chin and sullen eyes and masses of crisped black hair parted carefully on a low forehead, or the mincing Cockney pronunciation, grafted on a native Yorkshire accent, with which the girl answered the trifling questions she asked her. She wore no cap or apron, and performed her service with a silent concentration which showed that it was not her usual vocation. To all Mrs. Elles’ remarks she replied civilly, but with a suggestion of closure in each answer. Mrs. Elles took a strong dislike to her at once. The three windows of the room opened on to the garden, the main path of which led by a slight upward gradient to the wicket gate and the series of upland pastures which she had traversed a few hours before on her way back from Brignal. That, she had ascertained, was the name of the place where she had first met Mr. Rivers. He must surely be even now crossing them on his way home from his work. She went across to the window and leaned out, and gazed disconsolately towards the empty sunset sky.