“B’en venu.  C’est vo’ masson.”

Simpson entered automatically.  The kitchen, with its hard earth floor and the sunlight drifting in through the bamboo sides, was not unclean, and a savoury smell came from the stew-pot on the ramshackle stove.  In one of the bars of sunlight a mango-coloured child of two years or so was playing with his toes—­he was surprisingly clean and perfectly formed.

“Aha, mon petit!” exclaimed Simpson.  He loved children.  “He is handsome,” he added, addressing the woman.

“Mine!” She turned the baby gently with her foot; he caught at the hem of her dress, laughing.  But she did not laugh.  “Neither spot nor blemish,” she said, and then:  “He is not yet three years old.”

Simpson shuddered, recalling the pock-marked drummer on the Arequipa.  That was momentary—­a coincidence, he told himself.  The woman was looking down at the child, her eyes softer than they had been, and the child was lying on its back and playing with her Mother Hubbard.

The woman lifted the lid from the pot and peered into it through the sun-shot steam.

“It is ready,” she said.  She lifted it from the stove and set it on the earthen floor.  The cripple placed a handful of knives and spoons on the table and three tin plates; he thrust a long fork and a long spoon into the pot and stood aside.

“Seat yourself,” said the woman, without looking at Simpson, “and eat.”

She explored the pot with the fork, and stabbed it firmly—­there was a suggestion of ruthlessness about her action that made Simpson shudder again—­into a slab of meat, which she dropped on a plate, using a callous thumb to disengage it from the tines.  She covered it with gravy and began to eat without further ceremony.  The cripple followed her example, slobbering the gravy noisily; some of it ran down his chin.  Neither of them paid any attention to Simpson.

He took the remaining plate from the table and stood irresolute with it in his hand.  He was hungry, but his essential Puritan fastidiousness, combined with that pride of race which he knew to be un-Christian, rendered him reluctant to dip into the common pot or to eat on equal terms with these people.  Besides, the sun and his amazing introduction to the island had given him a raging headache:  he could not think clearly nor rid himself of the sinister suggestion of the town, of the house, of its three occupants in particular.

The child touched a ringer to the hot lip of the pot, burned itself, and began to cry.

“Taise,” said the woman.  Her voice was low but curt, and she did not raise her eyes from her plate.  The child, its finger in its mouth, stopped crying at once.