Page:Georges Eekhoud - Escal Vigor, a novel.djvu/146

122 Henry again showed himself very attentive towards Claudie, taking an interest in the management of the farm, getting explanations from the farmer's daughter, stopping with complacence and without showing the least signs of boredom, before the stores of potatoes, beetroot, beans or grain, which were shown to him in heated granaries or dark, moist outhouses. He lingered behind more than once to gaze at certain labours of the farm-hands, much admiring, for example, the action of two ploughboys, the one standing up on a cartload of clover, the other stationed at the entrance of a barn and receiving on his fork the bundles of red flowers which his companion threw to him. Of brown complexion, eyes of crockery blue, a childish smile on their thick lips displaying a sound row of teeth, they worked with a swagger, and Claudie having hailed them in a bold, guttural voice, they redoubled their sculpturesque and somewhat suggestive exertions. She encouraged them pretty much as she would have done painstaking beasts of burden.

Kehlmark inquired after the young Guidon, but in an indifferent manner, and as it were through simple politeness to the family.