At first Flo thought she meant her daughter, but the little woman went energetically out again to the step and yelled carryingly and peremptorily, “Emmott!” Then back once more she came straight to the grate and lifted the kettle without troubling about the hotness of the handle and poured bubbling water into a tea-pot that had been waiting on the grate shelf. The pot was brown and round and matched the little woman perfectly. Flo had chance to study her for several seconds, and she was struck by the puckered smallness of her face, on which her tiny snub nose protruded exactly as the knob did on the tea-pot lid. Then she was talking again in her harsh quick way:
“Shape thysen. There’s cups an’ saucers in yon cupboard . . . if Emmott doesna come, it’s his own loss.”
The cupboard built into the wall on the left of the grate had six shelves, all holding great stacks of orderly pots. Flo was surprised at the number. She took pots for three and set them on the bare cream-scrubbed table. Mrs. Nadin came back from across the passage with a plate of currant pastry squares. The pastry was brown and thick, but Flo’s teeth broke in easily and it was flaky and delicious. With one elbow on the table and half turned towards the fire Mrs. Nadin sat opposite. Her feet did not touch the floor. She chewed quickly, her lower jaw working a little sideways as a sheep’s does at its cud; she chewed always on the left side as if it was only there that she had teeth.
“What done they call you?” she asked without warning. “Who the heck did they call you that after?”
“My mother chose it,” said Flo. They were the first words she had got in since her arrival, and they were only managed because Monica Nadin had taken up her cup.
“I thought oo were dead,” she commented the next second.
“Who?” Flo asked. “No, my father . . .”
“Happen it’s as well,” said Mrs. Nadin promptly. “If he were as much worry as my mon, she’s better ’bout him. Best thing as could be done to my mon would be tee a brick round his neck an’ drown him.”
Flo heard a slow approach of nailed boots.
“Here’s the long-legged devil,” Mrs. Nadin announced. “Allus turns up ’bout half an hour late.”
Flo nearly smiled at the contrast. Emmott Nadin could only just come in under the lintel. Broad though he was his height and straightness made him look almost slim. His head, too, was long, and was topped by white hair with which an old man would have appeared older, but which made his middle-age look younger. Flo liked him at once, though he did not give her any notice, walking slowly to the single high-backed arm-chair on the right by the grate. His cap he hung on a nail just under the mantelpiece, and one foot he rested on the steel fender in a posture that was obviously a habit.
“What the heckment have you bin doin’?” Mrs. Nadin attacked promptly. “Didna you hear me?”
“Happen I did,” he answered in a non-committal drawl; and he smiled very slightly at Flo.
“Done yo’ know who this is?” his wife demanded.
“Nao,” he replied, not in the least interested.
“It’s the new girl.”
“Oh, ay,” and he nodded very slightly and then looked back into the fire and went on sipping tea, drawing it in with a little hiss between nearly touching teeth.
“He’s ’bout as interestin’ as a log,” Mrs. Nadin commented. “If I didna talk, it ’ud be a dead place, this house. You dunna seem very talkative.”
“No,” said Flo.
“You’ll have no need ta be,” the farmer put in laconically. This time he looked up somewhat more directly, as if he wished to get a fuller impression. He seemed satisfied. “I guess Missis ’as told you already how to get on here . . . keep your mouth shut. If oo’d tek her own advice, there’d be a bit more peace.”
“Tha great gob!” exclaimed Mrs. Nadin, yet the dispute developed no further, and Flo gathered that this way of talking was more or less usual. As soon as he had finished his cup the farmer got up, put his cap on carelessly and went quietly out. Then Clem came in and dropped into the empty chair, keeping his cap on.
“Saw Sally Bowes as I went through . . . oo looks pretty close,” he remarked.
“Fat as a farrowin’ sow. If it isna twins it’ll be triplets. If I looked like her, I’d keep in, ’stead of displayin’ myself,” said Mrs. Nadin. “Did yo’ see Dot?”
“Never looked for her.”
“Once she’s out, she’s satisfied, the flit-about,” said Mrs. Nadin, leaning over the fire-bar filling up her second cup by tilting the kettle. “Doesna matter a tinker’s damn about me stuck in workin’ my guts out.”
“You’ll have a bit of help naa,” he pointed out smoothly.
“Ay, an’ like enough she’ll be as bad by she’s bin here a two-three weeks. Get another cup,” she said suddenly, looking straightly at Flo. “If yo’ dunna look after yourself, no one else will. It’s find your own way to hell or heaven, an’ if you havena got enough grit, you’ll rot.”