She sat on her bench in the sun with her ruined hands in her lap and looked at this one. She looked at him the way she would have looked at a strange swarm settled in her hedge, to see what sort of temper it had.
He stayed. That was the first thing. Nor would he sit, not at first. He stood by the wall where he had put his hat, with his back to the door that had shut in his face. He looked down into the valley as if the view were the thing he had ridden all this way to see.
A bee came and walked on his sleeve. He looked at it and kept his arm quite still. After a while, it flew off again, and something in his shoulders let go a little, like a man who has just been told something he wanted to know.
"You'll not stand there till dark," said Kezia.
He turned his head. "I might."
"Then you'll be some use while you're at it." She lifted her chin toward the far end of the wall. "The trough wants filling. The bees drink in this heat like carters. There's a bucket by the rain barrel and a spring down the slope. Mind the stones. They roll."
She had expected him to laugh, or to stare, or to say something about who he was. He did none of those things. He took off his coat, folded it, and laid it on the wall beside his hat. Then he rolled back his shirtsleeves and went to find the bucket.
The spring was a good way down the hill. She watched him go down to it, come back up with the full bucket, and go down again. Not a drop went over the rim. He carried it the way a man carries a thing he has carried before, with his arm held a little out from his body. He filled the trough to the lip, and then he laid a few flat stones in the water so the bees would have somewhere to stand while they drank.
Kezia had not told him to do that. She sat very still on the bench.
"Who taught you that?" she said when he came back past her.
"She did." He set down the bucket. "Not on purpose. She said they drown in deep water if nobody gives them a place to put their feet."