"Did you hear of anythink ?" "They're turnin' off hands instead of takin' ov 'em on," he said briefly, and fell into a chair by the grate.
He had hardly greeted Marcella, who had certainly looked to be greeted.
Ever since her arrival in August, as she had told Aldous Raeburn, she had taken a warm interest in this man and his family.

There was something about them which marked them out a bit from their fellows--whether it was the husband's strange but not repulsive deformity, contrasted with the touch of plaintive grace in the wife, or the charm of the elfish children, with their tiny stick-like arms and legs, and the glancing wildness of their blue eyes, under the frizzle of red hair, which shone round their little sickly faces.

Very soon she had begun to haunt them in her eager way, to try and penetrate their peasant lives, which were so full of enigma and attraction to her, mainly because of their very defectiveness, their closeness to an animal simplicity, never to be reached by any one of her sort.

She soon discovered or imagined that Hurd had more education than his neighbours.
At any rate, he would sit listening to her--and smoking, as she made him do--while she talked politics and socialism to him; and though he said little in return, she made the most of it, and was sure anyway that he was glad to see her come in, and must some time read the labour newspapers and Venturist leaflets she brought him, for they were always well thumbed before they came back to her.
But to-night his sullen weariness would make no effort, and the hunted restless glances he threw from side to side as he sat crouching over the fire--the large mouth tight shut, the nostrils working--showed her that he would be glad when she went away.
Her young exacting temper was piqued.

She had been for some time trying to arrange their lives for them.