‘Do!’ he said. ‘Can I make you tea or anything, or will you drink a glass of beer? It’s moderately cool.’

‘Beer!’ said Connie.

‘Beer for me, please!’ said Hilda, with a mock sort of shyness. He looked at her and blinked.

He took a blue jug and tramped to the scullery. When he came back with the beer, his face had changed again.

Connie sat down by the door, and Hilda sat in his seat, with the back to the wall, against the window corner.

‘That is his chair,’ said Connie softly.’ And Hilda rose as if it had burnt her.

‘Sit yer still, sit yer still! Ta’e ony cheer as yo’n a mind to, none of us is th’ big bear,’ he said, with complete equanimity.

And he brought Hilda a glass, and poured her beer first from the blue jug.

‘As for cigarettes,’ he said, ‘I’ve got none, but ‘appen you’ve got your own. I dunna smoke, mysen. Shall y’ eat summat?’ He turned direct to Connie. ‘Shall t’eat a smite o’ summat, if I bring it thee? Tha can usually do wi’ a bite.’ He spoke the vernacular with a curious calm assurance, as if he were the landlord of the Inn.

‘What is there?’ asked Connie, flushing.

‘Boiled ham, cheese, pickled wa’nuts, if yer like.—Nowt much.’

‘Yes,’ said Connie. ‘Won’t you, Hilda?’

Hilda looked up at him.

‘Why do you speak Yorkshire?’ she said softly.

‘That! That’s non Yorkshire, that’s Derby.’

He looked back at her with that faint, distant grin.

‘Derby, then! Why do you speak Derby? You spoke natural English at first.’

‘Did Ah though? An’ canna Ah change if Ah’m a mind to ‘t? Nay, nay, let me talk Derby if it suits me. If yo’n nowt against it.’

‘It sounds a little affected,’ said Hilda.

‘Ay, ‘appen so! An’ up i’ Tevershall yo’d sound affected.’ He looked again at her, with a queer calculating distance, along his cheek–bone: as if to say: Yi, an’ who are you?

He tramped away to the pantry for the food.

The sisters sat in silence. He brought another plate, and knife and fork. The he said:

‘An’ if it’s the same to you, I s’ll ta’e my coat off like I allers do.’

And he took off his coat, and hung it on the peg, then sat down to table in his shirt–sleeves: a shirt of thin, cream–coloured flannel.

‘‘Elp yerselves!’ he said. ‘‘Elp yerselves! Dunna wait f’r axin’!’ He cut the bread, then sat motionless. Hilda felt, as Connie once used to, his power of silence and distance. She saw his smallish, sensitive, loose hand on the table. He was no simple working man, not he: he was acting! acting!

‘Still!’ she said, as she took a little cheese. ‘It would be more natural if you spoke to us in normal English, not in vernacular.’