And they both stopped to look at the uncertain movements of the little figure. Even curiosity in the country is slow in its operations. They stood half turned away from the milk-pails, which were their real point of meeting, and stared slowly, while the unwonted passenger in still more unwonted uncertainty flickered along. In the meantime there had been a little commotion at the ‘Green Man,’ such as was very unusual too: for in the morning all was decorous and quiet there, if not always so at night. There was a loud sound of voices, which, though beyond the range of the milkman and his customer, attracted the attention of other people who were about their morning’s business. The postman paused while feeling for his letters, and turned his head that way, and the people in the shop came running out to the door. ‘It’ll be him as made the row last night,’ they said, in fond expectation of a second chapter. Their hopes were so far realized that at this moment the folding swinging-doors flew open, and a man burst out more quickly than is the usual custom of retiring guests. And he stopped to shake his fist at the door, where Johnson appeared after him watching his departure. ‘I promise you I’ll keep an eye on you,’ Johnson cried after him, and the stranger sent back a volley of curses fortunately too hoarse to be very articulate. Mrs. Sandford crossed the road again just at that moment, and she heard better than the observers far off. A look of horror came over her face. ‘Oh! my good man,’ she cried, lifting up her hand, ‘I am sure you don’t wish all those horrible things. What good can it do you to swear!’ The man looked at her for a moment. Her little dainty figure, her careful dress, her spotless looks made such a contrast to this big ruffian, all disordered, squalid, and foul, with every appearance of having lain among the straw all night, and the traces of last night’s debauch still hanging about him, as no words could express. He stood a moment taken aback by her address; probably he would have shrunk even from appealing to the charity of a being so entirely different and out of his sphere; but to have her stop there and speak to him took away his breath. His hand stole up to his cap involuntarily. ‘It do a man a deal of good, lady,’ he said; ‘it relieves your mind; but I didn’t ought to,’ he added, beginning to calculate, ‘I know.’ ‘You should not, indeed,’ she said; and then added, ‘You seem a stranger. Are you looking for work? or have you any friends about here?’ The postman, the woman at the shop, and everybody within sight admired and wondered to see Mrs. Sandford talking to ‘the man.’ This was the name he had already acquired in Edgeley. They wondered if she could know that he was a man out of prison. But she was known to be very kind. ‘I shouldn’t wonder if that was just why she’s doing of it, because nobody else would touch him with a pair of tongs,’ an acute person said.