"Know anything about cattle?"
"I was reared in a farming country."
"Good." He scrutinized Hugo minutely. "I'll try you at eight dollars a
week, room, and board." He opened the gate.
Hugo paused. The notion of finding employment somewhere in the country
had been fixed in his mind and he wondered why he waited, even as he
did, when the charm of the old manor had offered itself to him as if by
a miracle. The man swung open the gate; he was lithe, sober, direct.
"My name is Cane--Ralph Cane. We raise blooded Guernsey stock here. At
the moment we haven't a man."
"I see," Hugo said.
"I could make the eight ten--in a week--if you were satisfactory."
"I wasn't considering the money--"
"How?"
"I wasn't considering the money."
"Oh! Come in. Try it." An eagerness was apparent in his tone. While Hugo
still halted on a knoll of indecision, a woman opened the French windows
which lined one façade of the house and stepped down from the porch. She
was very tall and very slender. Her eyes were slaty blue and there was a
delicate suggestion--almost an apparition--of grey in her hair.
"What is it, Ralph?" Her voice was cool and pitched low.
"This is my wife," Cane said.
"My name is Danner."
Cane explained. "I saw this man standing by the gate, and now I'm hiring
him."
"I see," she said. She looked at Hugo. The crystalline substance of her
eyes glinted transiently with some inwardness--surprise, a vanishing
gladness, it might have been. "You are looking for work?"
"Yes," Hugo answered.