Thus Elizabeth found that the
Scotchman was located in a room quite close to the small one that had
been allotted to herself and her mother.
When she entered nobody was present but the young man himself--the
same whom she had seen lingering without the windows of the King's Arms
Hotel. He was now idly reading a copy of the local paper, and was hardly
conscious of her entry, so that she looked at him quite coolly, and saw
how his forehead shone where the light caught it, and how nicely his
hair was cut, and the sort of velvet-pile or down that was on the skin
at the back of his neck, and how his cheek was so truly curved as to be
part of a globe, and how clearly drawn were the lids and lashes which
hid his bent eyes.
She set down the tray, spread his supper, and went away without a word.
On her arrival below the landlady, who was as kind as she was fat
and lazy, saw that Elizabeth-Jane was rather tired, though in her
earnestness to be useful she was waiving her own needs altogether. Mrs.
Stannidge thereupon said with a considerate peremptoriness that she and
her mother had better take their own suppers if they meant to have any.
Elizabeth fetched their simple provisions, as she had fetched the
Scotchman's, and went up to the little chamber where she had left her
mother, noiselessly pushing open the door with the edge of the tray.
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