At once she piped out a derisive “Poor innocent!” Then, with a change of tone:  “The shop’s for business.  Why don’t you go to the shop to talk with him?”

The furious speed of her fingers and knitting-needles made one dizzy; and with squeaky indignation: 

“Sitting here staring at that girl—­is that what you call business?”

“No,” I said suavely.  “I call this pleasure—­an unexpected pleasure.  And unless Miss Alice objects—­”

I half turned to her.  She flung at me an angry and contemptuous “Don’t care!” and leaning her elbow on her knees took her chin in her hand—­a Jacobus chin undoubtedly.  And those heavy eyelids, this black irritated stare reminded me of Jacobus, too—­the wealthy merchant, the respected one.  The design of her eyebrows also was the same, rigid and ill-omened.  Yes!  I traced in her a resemblance to both of them.  It came to me as a sort of surprising remote inference that both these Jacobuses were rather handsome men after all.  I said: 

“Oh!  Then I shall stare at you till you smile.”

She favoured me again with an even more viciously scornful “Don’t care!”

The old woman broke in blunt and shrill: 

“Hear his impudence!  And you too!  Don’t care!  Go at least and put some more clothes on.  Sitting there like this before this sailor riff-raff.”

The sun was about to leave the Pearl of the Ocean for other seas, for other lands.  The walled garden full of shadows blazed with colour as if the flowers were giving up the light absorbed during the day.  The amazing old woman became very explicit.  She suggested to the girl a corset and a petticoat with a cynical unreserve which humiliated me.  Was I of no more account than a wooden dummy?  The girl snapped out:  “Shan’t!”

It was not the naughty retort of a vulgar child; it had a note of desperation.  Clearly my intrusion had somehow upset the balance of their established relations.  The old woman knitted with furious accuracy, her eyes fastened down on her work.

“Oh, you are the true child of your father!  And that talks of entering a convent!  Letting herself be stared at by a fellow.”

“Leave off.”

“Shameless thing!”

“Old sorceress,” the girl uttered distinctly, preserving her meditative pose, chin in hand, and a far-away stare over the garden.

It was like the quarrel of the kettle and the pot.  The old woman flew out of the chair, banged down her work, and with a great play of thick limb perfectly visible in that weird, clinging garment of hers, strode at the girl—­who never stirred.  I was experiencing a sort of trepidation when, as if awed by that unconscious attitude, the aged relative of Jacobus turned short upon me.

She was, I perceived, armed with a knitting-needle; and as she raised her hand her intention seemed to be to throw it at me like a dart.  But she only used it to scratch her head with, examining me the while at close range, one eye nearly shut and her face distorted by a whimsical, one-sided grimace.