Jenny: "What Kind of Man is This?"

Caleb plucked a string and watched the thrum of it, stilling it with the knuckle of his thumb as his fingers moved on. Over the curve of his harp he could see the Guttersnipe and Aithne, and under the softness of his playing he could hear them. At Aithne's words, the brown-flecked girl jerked her head round, eyes hard in her pointed vixen face: she was the sort to strike a blow at whatever was closest, no matter that it was not what she particularly wanted to hit. But like a candle which springs up angry and tall when first lit, and sinks to a quiet, steady glow, her eyes dropped back to her work and she gave her head a mare-ish little shake. "Uncanny is a manner of putting it," she replied. "It is a matter of authority. It is ours to See and Know and whisper winds of spring out of the Land of Summer... You may call it uncanny, if you like."

A spray of golden notes, each perfect as flaming autumnal leaves, fell from Caleb's hands. So like her father she could be, the little brown-flecked girl: cold in a touch of warmth, turning the shoulder while she turned her face, wary and friendly at once. He wondered if the frank Erin-girl would understand: so few people did. She was, with all respect and love for country people, not much more yet than a country girl, seeing the world in black and white and straight as the furrows of a field. But men could furrow more than fields, and there was a blur of indistinct colour between the white of the eye and the black centre. The Guttersnipe managed without thinking about it to hold on to her valley roots with a fierce vengeance and at the same time move among the tangled knotwork of their British scene. She had done it since childhood: it was natural for her. But Caleb was not sure Aithne would ever come to that place where the darker dimension of men's minds became an important reality - no more important than the furrowed farmland that sustained them, but just as real. If the Guttersnipe was not careful, the Erin-girl would never understand the coolness, but always mistake that detached thoughtfulness for disinterest, when the Guttersnipe, like her lords, was only going away within herself to think.