“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 … ‘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.’

He looked at her, feeling her devil of a will.

‘Would it?’ he said, in the normal English. ‘Would it? Would anything that was said between you and me be quite natural, unless you said you wished me to hell before your sister ever saw me again: and unless I said something almost as unpleasant back again? Would anything else be natural?’

‘Oh yes!’ said Hilda. ‘Just good manners would be quite natural.’

‘Second nature, so to speak!’ he said: then he began to laugh. ‘Nay’, he said. ‘I'm weary o’ manners. Let me be!’