reatorex's command she brought the little round oak
table from its place in the front window and set it by the hearth
before the visitor. Humbly, under her master's eye, yet with a sort of
happy pride about her, she set out the tea-things and the glass dishes
of jam and honey and tea-cakes.

Greatorex waited, silent and awkward, till his servant had left the
room. Then he came forward.

"Theer's caake," he said. "Maaggie baaked un yesterda'. An' theer's
hooney."

He made no servile apologies for what he set before her. He was giving
her nothing that was not good, and he knew it.

And he sat down facing her and watched her pour out her tea and help
herself with her little delicate hands. If he had been a common man, a
peasant, his idea of courtesy would have been to leave her to herself,
to turn away his eyes from her in that intimate and sacred act of
eating and drinking. But Greatorex was a farmer, the descendant of
yeomen, and by courtesy a yeoman still, and courtesy bade him watch
and see that his guest wanted for nothing.

That he did not sit down at the little table and drink tea with her
himself showed that his courtesy knew where to draw the dividing line.

"But why aren't you having anything yourself?" said Alice. She really
wondered.

He smiled. "It's a bit too early for me, thank yo'. Maaggie'll mak' me
a coop by and bye."

And she said to herself, "How beautifully he did it."

He was indeed doing it beautifully all through. He watched her little
fingers, and the very instant they had disposed of a morsel he offered
her another. It was a deep and exquisite pleasure to him to observe
her in that act of eating and drinking. He had never seen anything
like the prettiness, the dainty precision that she brought to it. He
had never seen anything so pretty as Ally herself, in the rough gray
tweed that exaggerated her fineness and fragility; never anything so
distracting and at the same time so heartrending as the gray muff and
collar of squirrel fur, and the little gray fur hat with the bit of
blue peacock's breast laid on one side of it like a folded wing.

As he watched her he thought, "If I was to touch her I should break
her."

* * * * *

Then the conversation began.

"I was sorry," he said, "to hear yo was so poorly, Miss Cartaret."

"I'm all right now. You can see I'm all right."

He shook his head. "I saw yo' a moonth ago, and I didn't think then I
sud aver se