puzzled. Any politeness would have made the situation
quite impersonal. But here it was a case of wills in confusion.
Brangwen flushed at her polite speech. Still he did not let her
go.

"Get summat an' wrap that up for her," he said to
Tilly, looking at the butter on the table.

And taking a clean knife, he cut off that side of the butter
where it was touched.

His speech, the "for her", penetrated slowly into the foreign
woman and angered Tilly.

"Vicar has his butter fra Brown's by rights," said the
insuppressible servant-woman. "We s'll be churnin' to-morrow
mornin' first thing."

"Yes"--the long-drawn foreign yes--"yes," said the
Polish woman, "I went to Mrs. Brown's. She hasn't any more."

Tilly bridled her head, bursting to say that, according to
the etiquette of people who bought butter, it was no sort of
manners whatever coming to a place cool as you like and knocking
at the front door asking for a pound as a stop-gap while your
other people were short. If you go to Brown's you go to Brown's,
an' my butter isn't just to make shift when Brown's has got
none.

Brangwen understood perfectly this unspoken speech of
Tilly's. The Polish lady did not. And as she wanted butter for
the vicar, and as Tilly was churning in the morning, she
waited.

"Sluther up now," said Brangwen loudly after this silence had
resolved itself out; and Tilly disappeared through the inner
door.

"I am afraid that I should not come, so," said the stranger,
looking at him enquiringly, as if referring to him for what it
was usual to do.

He felt confused.

"How's that?" he said, trying to be genial and being only
protective.

"Do you----?" she began deliberately. But she was
not sure of her ground, and the conversation came to an end. Her
eyes looked at him all the while, because she could not speak
the language.

They stood facing each other. The dog walked away from her to
him. He bent down to it.

"And how's your little girl?" he asked.

"Yes, thank you, she is very well," was the reply, a phrase
of polite speech in a foreign language merely.

"Sit you down," he said.

And she sat in a chair, her slim arms, coming through the
slits of her cloak, resting on her lap.

"You're not used to these parts," he said, still standing on
the hearthrug with his back to the fire, coatless, looking with
curious directness at the woman. Her self-possession pleased him
and inspired him, set him curiously free. It seemed to him