As Ben hurried up to pass them before they
separated, really see her, this other girl recognised him, flung him a
friendly "Hullo!" and was answered in the same fashion.
As he moved on he heard her--was meant to hear, knew that he was meant
to hear, from the pitch of the voice--"Clever ain't no word fur it!
There ain't no tune as----"
The end of the sentence was lost; but he knew the sort of thing, knew
it by heart, had spent his time running away from it. Now, however, he
was grateful: more grateful still when he met Miss Ankles again, and
she herself, regarding Florry Hines' eulogy as a sort of introduction,
smiled, moved on a step, and herself tossed a "Hullo" over one
shoulder.
Ben's thin olive-tinted face was flushed as he drew forward to her side
with his odd stoop, his way of ducking his head and raising his eyes,
dark and glowing. He took jenny's dinner-basket, and she noticed his
hands, large and well-shaped, with long fingers, widened at the tips.
Florry had said that he was a "Sheeny," but there was nothing of the
Jew about him apart from his colouring, his brilliant dark eyes; unless
it were a sort of inner glow, an ardour, curbed by his almost childlike
shyness, lack of self-confidence in everything apart from his music:
that something, at once finer and more cruelly persistent, vital, than
is to be found in the purely Anglo-Saxon race.
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