He did not like that even she should see, and when he rose
she dived away into her hole. Then he walked on leisurely, that the dusk
might have reached the village streets before he walked there. The first
house was the smith's, and before the open door two idle urchins lolled.
As he hurried up the street in the gathering gloom he heard them laugh long
and loudly behind him. He glanced round fearingly, and would almost have
fled, but that the strange skirts clung about his legs. And after all it
was only a spark that had alighted on the head of one, and not the strange
figure they laughed at.
The door of the hotel stood wide open, and the light fell out into the
street. He knocked, and the landlady came. She peered out to look for the
cart that had brought the traveller; but Gregory's heart was brave now he
was so near the quiet room. He told her he had come with the transport
wagons that stood outside the town.
He had walked in, and wanted lodgings for the night.
It was a deliberate lie, glibly told; he would have told fifty, though the
recording angel had stood in the next room with his pen dipped in the ink.
What was it to him? He remembered that she lay there saying always: "I am
better."
The landlady put his supper in the little parlour where he had sat in the
morning. When it was on the table she sat down in the rocking-chair, as
her fashion was to knit and talk, that she might gather news for her
customers in the taproom.
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